The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Tennessee law that restricts access to gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, clearing the way for the medical treatments for transgender youth to be limited in half of the country.
The high court ruled 6-3 in rejecting the challenge from the Biden administration, three families and a physician who had argued that Tennessee's law violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. The court concluded that the state's measure, enacted in 2023, does not run afoul of the 14th Amendment.
"Our role is not 'to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic' of the law before us, but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
The court's majority found that Tennessee's law is not subject to a heightened level of judicial and satisfies the most deferential standard, known as rational basis.
The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, were in dissent. Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench.
