Sotomayor warns Skrmetti decision will cause ‘untold harm’ to transgender children in scathing dissent
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Sotomayor warns Skrmetti decision will cause ‘untold harm’ to transgender children in scathing dissent
Sotomayor said the 6-3 decision improperly discriminated against minors based on their sex. The liberal justice made the atypical move to read her dissent from the bench. The case arose from the Biden administration suing over a bill Tennessee passed in 2023 to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy as treatments for minors who identify as transgender. “The Court’s willingness to do so here here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause,” SotomayOr said. “It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted six of her colleagues on the Supreme Court in a blistering dissent on Wednesday for deciding to uphold a Tennessee law banning specific transgender medical treatments for minors.
Sotomayor said the 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti, issued along ideological lines, improperly discriminated against minors based on their sex. The liberal justice made the atypical move to read her dissent from the bench.
Sotomayor, who was appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama, said the majority “refuses to call a spade a spade” and “obfuscates a sex classification” to allow the Tennessee bill to withstand constitutional tests.
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“The Court’s willingness to do so here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight,” Sotomayor said. “It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”
The case, which was one of the most closely watched of the high court’s term, arose from the Biden administration suing over a bill Tennessee passed in 2023 to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy as treatments for minors who identify as transgender.
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Sotomayor, whose dissent was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, said doctors would offer such medical treatments based on a patient having gender dysphoria. A law banning that practice requires a heightened level of scrutiny that the Supreme Court’s majority recklessly did not apply, Sotomayor alleged.
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“The majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review,” Sotomayor wrote. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.”
The Supreme Court’s decision effectively allows states who pass laws like Tennessee’s to ban certain medical treatments for minors.