WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in United States v. Skrmetti, a case in which the Supreme Court considered whether Tennessee’s ban on providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender adolescents violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Constitutional Accountability Center Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program David H. Gans issued the following reaction:

Today’s decision is a stunning betrayal of the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise that all persons, including transgender persons, are entitled to equal protection of the law. The Court’s governing equal protection framework demands an honest appraisal of whether a law classifies based on an invidious ground, such as race or sex. Today, the Court instead blinkers reality, turning a blind eye to the fact that the Tennessee statute is sex-based at its core. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed in her dissenting opinion, “sex determines access to the covered medication. Physicians in Tennessee can prescribe hormones and puberty blockers to help a male child, but not a female child, look more like a boy; and to help a female child, but not a male child, look more like a girl.”

In upholding this Tennessee law, the Court’s conservative supermajority treats a statute that denies critically important medical care to transgender adolescents—and only transgender adolescents—as deserving of no more judicial scrutiny than economic or business regulation, ignoring the Fourteenth Amendment’s core promise to end state-sponsored discrimination of the marginalized. Rather than affording equal protection to transgender children, the Court invites states to visit severe harms on them without the demanding scrutiny the Fourteenth Amendment requires.

For decades, the Court has insisted that all sex-based laws must be subjected to heightened scrutiny. Today’s ruling marks a stark departure, using specious results-oriented reasoning to permit Tennessee to flout the constitutional guarantee of equal protection for all persons.

CAC Vice President Praveen Fernandes added this reaction:

The Court’s conservative supermajority went through mental gymnastics to avoid calling S.B. 1 what it plainly is—a law that classifies on the basis of sex. And the reason for that is simple: when a law classifies on the basis of sex, both the Constitution and the Court’s own well-settled precedent require that courts apply heightened scrutiny in determining the constitutionality of that law.

As Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, stated in her powerful dissent, “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.” In addition to the unfathomable and cruel human harms this decision will cause, the majority should not lose sight of the damage it also will do to the Court, undermining its reputation as an institution able to serve as a bulwark against sex discrimination.