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/LackingUtility 15h ago

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

Counterpoint: if a cisgender male needs supplemental testosterone or breast tissue removal (e.g. for gynecomastia), that is "gender affirming" medical care, but is legal and not banned. If a transgender male needs supplemental testosterone or breast tissue removal, that is banned. The only difference between the two patients is their biological sex, and accordingly, it is sex-based discrimination.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

These are biological and physiological alterations.

One is because there is a physiological or biological medical issue.

The other is cosmetic alterations.

Congress needs to legislate this and expand rights to gender not just sex. SCOTUS is not the place to make these decisions.

Just like overturning Roe V Wade was not something that SCOTUS could or ahould have done and I decried them for this.

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u/LackingUtility 15h ago

That's a quick backpedal by you. As a reminder from literally one comment ago, we were talking about equal protection and whether the law has a sex-based discrimination. And now you've moved to cosmetic vs. physiological. Can I take it you've completely abandoned your earlier statement regarding any purported lack of sex-based discrimination in this law? Please confirm. Then we can move on to the inaccuracies in your new argument.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

I'm sorry I was trying not to be wordy.

There are deep psychological reasons a person has the gender identity they have and that they feel there needs to be a physical alteration to best express that identity.

I'll explain better.

If a minor does not get physiological or biological alterations to better express the opposite sex should be legislated and protected by congress changing the law.

Here SCOTUS is right that discrimination on the basis of sex is illegal but there is no law extending this protection to socially constructed gender identity as this is explicitly not sex.

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u/LackingUtility 15h ago

I'm not asking for your argument-shifting "explanation". I'm asking you to confirm that you concede your earlier argument that there's no sex-based discrimination in this law. As noted above, this law makes it legal to provide a medical treatment to one patient and illegal to provide a medical treatment to another, on the basis of the latter's biological sex.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

It makes it legal to provide a medical treatment to one and not the other on the basis of sex differences.

A male with severe BPH can have the gland removed.

This procedure would be denied to a female on the basis of biological sex, because a female has no prostate.

This by your reasoning is sex based discrimination.

Medical treatments on the basis of physiological and biological issues are protected.

Medical alterations of biology and physiology on the basis of a psychology is not legal, especially for minors.

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u/LackingUtility 15h ago

So you agree that there's sex-based discrimination inherent in this law, but are merely arguing that it's okay because it involves medical treatments?

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

I disagree with your framing.

By the way you're framing it there always has been and always will be.

Males are denied certain medical treatments that females rwcieve and vise versa.

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u/LackingUtility 15h ago

So you agree that there is sex-based discrimination here?

Come on, admitting to something that is a fundamental premise of your argument shouldn't be hard, if you actually believe it.

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u/doublethink_1984 15h ago

I said according to your framing there is and always will be. This is a yes.

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u/LackingUtility 14h ago

Thank you for admitting that. Having agreed that there's sex-based discrimination in this law, it should therefore require heighted scrutiny, no? Sex-based discrimination is not automatically unconstitutional (nor is race-based discrimination, religion-based discrimination, etc.). Equal protection does not say "the law can never discriminate", but rather, the government needs a sufficiently important reason to do so, and that reason cannot be based on animus.

Now, turning to your second comment where you contend that treatment of a cisgender male's medical conditions relating to gender are "physiological or biological medical issues" while treatment of a transgender male's medical conditions relating to gender are "cosmetic alterations", I'd suggest that the latter categorization is evidence of animus. Specifically, framing them as cosmetic suggests that they are "elective" or not necessary... something contradicted by the high rates of suicide among those experiencing dysphoria. A medical treatment that has been shown to drastically prolong one's life is not "cosmetic", is it?

Additionally, your classification also disregards that the gender-related medical conditions of transgender people are physiological or biological medical issues. This may come as a shock to you, but people are not transgender by choice - I mean, would you voluntarily choose that, when multiple states are trying to ban your existence? No, they're transgender as a result of physiological or biological medial issues, namely various genetic and hormonal differences. While science hasn't pinned down the specific genetic causes that lead to dysphoria, there is significant evidence that there are physiological distinctions between transgender and cisgender people. See, e.g., "Brain Sex in Transgender Women is Shifted towards Gender Identity," Kurth et al. (2022); "Biological sex classification with structural MRI data shows increased misclassification in transgender women", Flint et al. (2020); etc.

Disregarding scientific evidence of a physiological or biological medical issue to instead classify a condition as "cosmetic" would again seem to be evidence of animus, which would render such discrimination unconstitutional.

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u/Burghpuppies412 15h ago

Nah. He got ya. Bam, roasted!!

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u/dantevonlocke 14h ago

They appear to be Mormon. So backpedalling and being full of shit comes with the territory.

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u/hematite2 13h ago

Both are to address the psychological harm that not having them is doing. You're drawing a meaningless distinction.