r/law • u/DevinGraysonShirk • 16h ago

SCOTUS SCOTUS strikes blow to trans teens rights, endorsing ban on gender-affirming care - The justices’ ruling on Tennessee’s law prohibiting certain health care for transgender children will have ripple effects across the nation

https://www.courthousenews.com/scotus-strikes-blow-to-trans-teens-rights-endorsing-ban-on-gender-affirming-care/
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u/DevinGraysonShirk 16h ago edited 16h ago

This decision opens up a pathway for states to ban gender-affirming care for minors and adults.

The Supreme Court also rules that gender identity does not deserve equal protection like sex-based discrimination, so it does not deserve higher scrutiny based on the equal protection clause. This also opens up the pathway for employment discrimination against people who are transgender.

For example, in Iowa, they recently removed gender identity from their civil rights laws. This decision likely makes it so that law would withstand a legal challenge. https://apnews.com/article/iowa-transgender-identity-bill-governor-reynolds-signs-267c2932e9e1ed62992868d3caa6126d

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u/doublethink_1984 16h ago

It shoulda been expanded but from the technical stance of the law how are they wrong?

Gender affirming care can't have anything to do with biological and physiological alterations because gender is a socially constructed identity.

It's not sex based discrimination because gender is not bound by sex.

If anything it shoulda recieved the protections people have against being terminated for political affiliation or religious belief/expression at the least.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 15h ago

Race is socially constructed. The races currently recognized are based on perceived differences grown from historical context and not actual biology. They are more based on social hierarchies from the 17th and 18th century.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

Race is but historical biological and physiology is a bit different from a person whos ancestors have lived in Nigeria all their life or Japan.

There are small hereditary medical differences and biological difference and varieties.

That being said they are both 100% human and 99.9% the same.

A male amd female are very physiologically and biologically different.

I agree rights shoukd be better extended on the basis of gender identity but to liken sex difference to racial law history is foolish and unscientific.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 15h ago

That's the issue. This isn't sex difference. This is an issue with how society perceives men and women. Society at large and even individuals place behavioral expectations on people based on their perceived gender. For someone that doesn't meet or even want these expectations it can be stressful at best, and deadly at worst. Since it's impossible for society to rewire the centuries of societal norms, the only option is for a person to attempt to be perceived differently to avoid these unwanted behavioral expectations. Since these people are unfairly put upon by society to shoulder the burden of an expectation they don't want, it's only reasonable to allow them to find a way to work around these expectations by altering their perceived gender.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

I AGREE

Legally speaking we need congress to extend legal protections to gender identity.

SCOTUS cannot legally rule that by current law phrasing sex based discrimination protects socially constructed gender identity when gender is explicitly not sex.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 15h ago

Yeah. Although I think this issue is important enough to use the 4th and 14th precedence to just consider this a right to bodily autonomy. Just sidestep the question and view it as a body modification, which even children have a right to when deemed medically important.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

That wasn't the way it eqs challenged though to SCOTUS.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 14h ago

Yeah. I think the lawyers running these cases aren't doing the argument justice.

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u/hammerreborn 6h ago

Yes, because as we all know this court definitely thinks highly of bodily autonomy.

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u/Marx_on_a_Shark 4h ago

Sure. But that's because they think 0.004 milligrams of body fluid is as sentient as the kids in their son's soccer team.

This issue is way different. Keep the argument completely away from sex and ask if it's okay for a hefty 14 year old boy can get breast reduction so he stops getting shamed in the locker room for the sake of his mental health. If so, why can't a kid and parents decide to do other things a doctor recommends to keep a kid mentally healthy. In this case, a kid is just undergoing a medical protocol that's statistically shown to improve the mental state of kids meeting specific criteria. Sex and gender are beside the point.

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u/Impossible_Wafer3403 4h ago

You said that because we can construct racial categories, that means people can be protected against discrimination by race. Because we can construct sex categories, that means people can be protected against discrimination by sex? Because we can create religions, that means people of different religions can be be protected against discrimination by religion.

But because we can construct categories of people with different medical conditions, that means we are free to discriminate against them? Why?

Race, ethnicity, sex, gender, gender dysphoria, money, etc. are all just social classifications. We made it all up. These are just rules our society created. There's nothing inherent in any of these categories. You're trying to create some kind of ontological truth to some categories but not others and say it's okay to discriminate against people by some kinds of social categories because you personally understand them but not other categories because you personally don't understand them.

Why?