The U.S. Supreme Court will review a challenge in the Fall to a Tennessee law, SB1, banning gender-transition treatment for minors. The law was enacted last year, in March 2023, and currently restricts hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors, even with parental permission and would impose civil penalties on doctors who violate the laws.
SBI prohibits health care providers from “prescribing, administering or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone” if the treatment is to “enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or treat “purported discomfort of distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” SB1 also prohibits surgical procedures undertaken for the same purpose.
Hormones and puberty blockers can still be administered if they are to treat conditions including; congenital defect, disease, physical injuries and precocious puberty.
This would be the first case the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the Constitutional rights of transgender people. The ruling on this case could impact nearly half the states in America that have active bans on gender transition care for minors.
Kelley Robinson, President of Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ group, said in a statement, “No politician should be able to interfere in decisions that are best made between families and doctors…”
Supporters claim the law is about protecting minors. State lawyers in the case wrote in a briefing to the court that Constitution does not allow parents to force “medical interventions for children that a state has found to be unproven and excessively risky…”
The law was challenged by the Biden administration and is said to violate the Constitution.
By - FZ
