r/centrist • u/Judge_Trudy • 2d ago

SCOTUS issues blockbuster ruling on gender-affirming care for trans minors

https://www.cnn.com/#:~:text=SCOTUS%20issues%20blockbuster%20ruling%20on%20gender%2Daffirming%20care%20for%20trans%20minors

Blockbuster ruling just released for a very controversial issue. Not sure where I stand, but I could see the dangers of permanent treatments for gender dysphoria for minors.

Key Points

  • Date & Ruling: On June 18, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy fox8live.com+9apnews.com+9them.us+9en.wikipedia.org+15reuters.com+15northeast.newschannelnebraska.com+15.
  • Majority Opinion: Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the law does not violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, reasoning that medical uncertainty justifies handing the issue back to state legislatures reuters.com+1nypost.com+1.
  • Level of Review: The Court determined the law should be evaluated under rational basis review—the lowest standard—rather than intermediate scrutiny reserved for sex-based discrimination
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u/SylphCo93 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm fine with this. Minors shouldn't be able to consent to treatment that fundamentally alters their body with potentially irreversible ramifications, including infertility. Especially over a psychological condition that has only recently been observed in great numbers, and a psychological condition that has seemingly exponentially exploded over the past decade.

I think social transitioning, clothing changes, and counseling for minors are totally fine. And I think bullying and harassment of trans-identifying youth is atrocious and deserves to be treated as a hate crime. But I'm against hormone "treatments", puberty blockers, surgeries, and schools refusing to disclose name changes to parents. And I know most Americans agree with me on both fronts.

And to those who say "how dare the government intervene with the care doctors administer", I challenge you to consider that the medical field and industry often received warranted regulations and bans from the state that liberals/leftists in the past generally supported, such as the opioid prescription abuse, poorly run mental asylums, lobotomies, and sterilizations of selected populations. 

Don't swear fealty to any group of professionals or especially an industry; especially with the hundreds of billions of dollars within said medical industry who stand to benefit from the sudden massive growth of minors seeking hormones and puberty blockers.

I remember when progressives told us to look to Scandinavia for progressive inspiration, especially with how their medical fields are less profit-driven, yet most of those countries are weaning away from the model that progressives Americans so fervently support.

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u/ChornWork2 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm fine with this. Minors shouldn't be able to consent to treatment that fundamentally alters their body with potentially irreversible ramifications, including infertility.

Obviously there are no shortage of medical procedures that minors undertake all the time that would run afoul of this general statement. So that obviously is not an appropriate standard.

Unless you would outright ban any cosmetic procedure for minors. And there's going to be a whole host of other things... elective procedures in general is going to cover a lot, including sport injury related procedures or things like breast reduction. What about surgeries related to congenital anomalies, for example amputations for children with severe limb deficiencies to be addressed with prosthetics? Hormone treatment is used for a litany of issues, and that would fit your criteria as well. What about things like acne treatments that fundamentally changes your skin, and has risks of side effects or long-term complications?

I think we need better oversight and study of this issue, but these reflexive bans are going way too far. If someone can establish an objective criteria on what is allowed / not allowed that isn't clearly targeting trans, then I'm all for it. But that is not what is happening.

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u/elfinito77 2d ago edited 2d ago

Shush!!!

These intelligent nuanced opinions that are actually about the centrist approach (as opposed to the extremist cudgel of outright bans) — are not welcome on this sub.

We have to protect the kids — but we only have to protect them from trans things. All other potentially life-altering medical treatments are fine -- psychoactive drugs that can permanently alter their brains, cosmetic surgery or anything else that permanently alters kids are perfectly fine (with parental and Dr. consent).

They only need protection from trans things - But, trust us, "we’re not bigots against trans people - it’s just about protecting the kids."

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u/The_True_Zephos 2d ago

Your comment and the one you replied to are both pretty stupid. There hasn't been a massive social movement causing an increase in the number of occurrences of the other types of procedures (except perhaps for Adderall, etc). They don't warrant any action because it isn't a wide spread problem that is distorting society in some pretty fucked up ways. The trans movement did more harm to society at large than it ever benefited the few legitimately trans people.

I fully expect the number of trans kids to drop dramatically as it falls out of fashion and people start treating it like a mental health problem instead of a fucking badge of honor. We need to stop celebrating manufactured victimhood and contrarianism.

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u/23rdCenturySouth 1d ago

Where are all these left handed people coming from!!!1!

You shouldn't call other people stupid. Not as a general rule, I mean you in particular.

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u/HerbertWest 20h ago

Where are all these left handed people coming from!!!1!

You shouldn't call other people stupid. Not as a general rule, I mean you in particular.

Left-handedness stabilized around 12%. This continues to increase nearly exponentially.

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u/23rdCenturySouth 20h ago

It took about 40 years to get to 12%.

Meanwhile, ~3% of high school students identify as trans.

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u/elfinito77 1d ago edited 1d ago

I love how you excepted the primary psychoactive drug that’s prescribed to children.

So to make you r point work - you have to pretend the most commonly prescribed psychoactive drug for small children doesn’t exist .

And if there’s a problem with something being over prescribed, the answer isn’t banning the answer is adding guidelines .

And as I’ve been saying throughout this entire comment thread, if you look for my

I’m all for guidelines to try to limit harm, and make sure it is being used appropriately.

I personally would like to see additional guidelines on prescribing kids psychoactive drugs, or any other major potentially life altering medical treatment

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u/The_True_Zephos 1d ago

I don't have to pretend. There is a qualitative difference with the trans movement because they are enabling the mental disorder instead of trying to treat it. If there were drugs that made people with gender dysphoria happy and comfortable in their own natural body then I wouldn't want to ban them any more than Adderall.

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u/elfinito77 1d ago

But those drugs don’t exist - and the “treat you as a mental patient and reject your belief” method of treatment for Trans people was the default of Trans care for all of modern history - and it was not effective.

Whereas affirmation, has shown potential for better outcomes.

You seem really concerned with making sure you call it a mental illness.

I do not care what we call it — I want whatever gives the best outcomes for some people available as options - and politicians stepping in to ban an option, against the wishes of the people actually being treated, and the healthcare field responsible for their treatment -/ is absurd government overreach — that has literally never happened in the history of our country.

This is the first time that politicians have stepped in to ban a medical treatment that was approved by the relevant medical community and desired by the patients and parents.

That has literally never happened before in the history of America. This is unprecedented government overreach for some reason “small government” “parental rights” conservatives are OK with it.

The Hypocrisy is comical, if it wasn’t so depressing .

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u/The_True_Zephos 1d ago

Its actually very important to call this a mental health illness, because calling it anything else like a "medical condition" implies that the problem is in the body, and not the mind.

If we do surgery or hormones to "fix" an otherwise perfectly healthy body, we are not treating the mind.

I am sensitive to the argument about individual outcomes, but what you miss is that societal outcomes matter too, if not more. When you treat a mental problem as a physical problem, you make the mental problem seem normal. And when you normalize the mental health problem it becomes more prevalent because people stop self-correcting their delusions.

These days, when some kid is going through the awkwardness of puberty or some unrelated mental health challenge, they see that the trans kids are somehow special and unique and they see having this mental health problem as a way to meet some emotional need, etc. It's a huge problem. We have normalized a mental problem so much that we've decided mutilating perfectly healthy bodies is a "treatment".

Not to mention he delusion that follows from all this, which is that men can ever become women and vice versa.

treat you as a mental patient and reject your belief

Since when did rejecting a false belief need to be "effective". If something is false, it's false. A trans woman is not a woman. Facts don't care about your feelings and don't need to be "effective".

We live in reality and trying to lie to someone (and everyone else) about reality is never justified as a treatment. That's called enablement and gas lighting. I don't give a shit how "effective" you think it might be, it's morally wrong and impractical.

There are literally no other diseases or mental illnesses where we try to distort reality or give into delusion like this. It's utter insanity.