Was the right to make sure of the sexes of minors possible?

Preventing harm to children is a goal that most people agree. But the broad gap between the red and blue states means that, in a group of regions, there is no consensus – in fact, there is a severe polarity – the meaning of “harm”. Regarding the issue of gender medical treatments for children and adolescents, both sides have claimed life or death. More than half of the states have laws that limit doctors to provide such treatments to minors; The remaining countries allow this type of care. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, in the United States against Skrmetti, saw that Tennessee’s prohibition on the use of puberty and hormones to address the gender defect does not violate the condition of equal protection of the constitution. The decision will allow other countries to leave in the place of dozens of laws restricted.

The attempt to obtain the Supreme Court to drop this ban, as it once did a ban on abortion, was a dream of the tube. But it is difficult to imagine a more vulnerable version of the legislation to commit the doctrine of equal protection to the court more than what the Legislative Council in Tennessee. The statute, SB1, prohibits medical service providers to use puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery to enable the minor to identify the “alleged identity that does not correspond to the gender of the minor” – but it allows medical treatments itself using other purposes, including supporting “natural development” for its minor. SB1 seemed a clear example, a textbook on the law that is “classified” on the basis of sex, and therefore it is supposed to be subject to “increasing” or “medium” scrutiny, as the court asks whether the sexual classification is closely related to achieving an important government goal. The covered medicine. ”Sotomoor wrote that the state allows the use of puberty and hormones to help a male child, but not a female child, like a boy; To help a female child, but not a child, he looks like a girl. ”If this is not a race for sex, what is in the world?

Like the defects, many students of the equal protection doctrine had immediately realized the classification of sex here and moved to its analysis under medium scrutiny. But the opinion of the senior judge John Roberts, the majority of the other five judges, was a major category in reformulating cases to see something completely different. In his eyes, SB1 was barely about sex at all and “it is clear that it was not classified on the basis of sex.” Instead, he saw in the law classifications only based on age and “medical use”. This is, when a “sexual transgender boy (his biological gender) takes adulthood to treat its gender inconsistency, receives a different medical treatment from the boy who is practiced by his biological gender who takes puberty blockers to treat early puberty.” Therefore, according to the court, access to the drug does not turn into whether the patient is a boy or a girl, but rather the medical condition prescribed by the drug. It is prohibited to prohibit the drug to treat gender speech defect equally on both boys and girls, and allow the drug itself to address both early adulthood perceptions. Ergo, not the classification of sex, and concluded Roberts. These gymnastics make one wonder whether any sex -dependent classification can be, Presto Chango, no.

Likewise, the court removed an argument that SB1 was distinguished against converting persons, with the mind that both transgender minors and Cisgender are unable to receive the medicine to treat sex defects. (For me, this logic is defective like the case on which conservative judges have relied on, GEDULDIG V. Aiello, which, in 1974, found that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy does not find sexual discrimination because some women do not carry or cute. (The court did not announce the category of new suspects for five decades, as it found that the sex was almost suspected. A group with a history of discrimination is included in the law – not just a history of discrimination against a year – and it was found that transgender people do not fit with this standard.

Under the conclusions of the chief of the judges that were cut, the beating heart of Skrmetti was the horror of the court, but it is clear in the event of scientific evidence of the effectiveness and integrity of the gender stimulation treatments. In its petition for the year 2023 to the court, the Ministry of Justice in Biden came with exaggerated demands for scientific compatibility – that “overwhelming evidence” supports the use of puberty and medical hormones in order for the public to learn in order to learn the extent of the absence of many others in the common recommendations. Gender confirmed medicine. The opinions of many judges agree on the scarcity of reliable studies and decisive results on long -term results for the use of puberty and hormones for transgender minors, and have been cited several European countries in the past few years about insufficient evidence. The National Health Service Report in England on this topic, which was published in April 2024 known as Cass review, concluded that “there is no good evidence of long -term outputs of interventions for sex -related distress” in transit minors, and that “the results of studies are exaggerated or collected by people from all parts of the discussion to support their point of view.” (Judge Clarence Thomas’s opinion seemed to be in line with what is roaming in something of the “category of experts” and “elite feelings” that work “under the guise of scientific governance”, until referring to a preferred medical basin, improvement of birth control.)

It was always difficult to photograph the court that tells the current court that she could not limit the gender -confirmed medical treatments. But there was an opportunity for Judge Neil Jourch, which Judges Roberts joined, as he did a sudden position, as he did in the Bustuk province against Clayton, in 2020, to form the majority; In this case, the court concluded that discrimination in work against gay employees or transgender people violates the seventh chapter on discrimination “due to” the gender of the individual “, with the reason that” it is impossible to distinguish against a person because he is gay or sexually transformed without discrimination against this individual on the basis of sex. “

Convincing two conservative judges to expand this very formal logic to the issue of equal protection of the constitution on medicine that confirms sex in children requires appetite. But the failure to recognize enough medical certainty made even legal arguments to the court seemed unprecedented. The belief that the legal arguments of the petitioner were healthier than Tennessee in light of the total issues of previous constitutional sex and the strength of gravity in Posk, I wondered whether the loss of credibility with regard to medical evidence would lead to the possible miserable voices. The humility about the state of scientific evidence was completely consistent with a constitutional objection to the classification of sex that deprives doctors of the ability to practice medical judgment and determine what is appropriate for the appointed patients.

However, Gorochy’s majority did not fulfill the logic of Bostock. The SB1 court found a constitutional because it concluded that the state has legitimate concerns about the potential risks of physical and psychological harm to minors, including infertility and regret that is irreversible. In the face of medical uncertainty, the court was unwilling to “guess” the decision of the legislative body. Judge Goroush remained significantly silent and signed the opinion of the chief judge.