A Tennessee law prohibits transgender minors from receiving gender transition surgery and hormone therapy. Professor Kurt Lash of the University of Richmond and David Gans of the Constitutional Accountability Center join Jeffrey Rosen to debate whether the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

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This episode was produced by Samson Mostashari and Bill Pollock. It was engineered by Bill Pollock. Research was provided by Yara Daraiseh, Gyuha Lee, Samson Mostashari, and Cooper Smith.

Participants

Kurt Lash is the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Richmond. He is the founder and director of the Richmond Program on the American Constitution and wrote a brief in support of the respondent in U.S. v. Skrmetti. He is currently working on a forthcoming book: A Troubled Birth of Freedom: The Struggle to Amend the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War.

David Gans is director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center. He is an experienced constitutional litigator and scholar, and, on behalf of the CAC, authored the brief in support of the petitioner in U.S. v. Skrmetti. Gans joined CAC after serving as program director of Cardozo Law School’s Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His most recent book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

Additional Resources

• U.S. v. Skrmetti, Supreme Court oral arugument (audio via C-SPAN; transcript)
• Kurt Lash, Brief of Professor Kurt T. Lash as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents, U.S. v. Skrmetti
• David Gans, Brief of Constitutional Accountability Center as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner and Respondents in Support of Petitioner, U.S. v. Skrmetti
• Bostock v. Clayton County (2020)
• Geduldig v. Aiello (1974)
• Loving v. Virginia (1967)