By Katelynn Richardson
Every conservative justice expressed skepticism Wednesday of the Biden administration’s challenge to state ban on child sex changes, except Justice Neil Gorsuch
Gorsuch, who authored a landmark ruling in 2020 expanding sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation in the context of employment, didn’t say a word during over two hours of oral arguments.
Tennessee’s law, which is at the center of the United States v. Skrmetti case, restricts minors from receiving medical treatments intended to help them live as an identity “inconsistent” with their sex. The Biden administration argues it draws sex-based lines on medical treatments in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“Someone assigned female at birth can’t receive medication to live as a male, but someone assigned male can,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices. (RELATED: Watch the Daily Caller’s documentary “Groomed”)
Justice Samuel Alito pressed Prelogar on the government’s “sweeping” claim that overwhelming evidence shows puberty blockers and hormone therapy improve the wellbeing of adolescents with gender dysphoria. He pointed to the Cass Report, a British review of transgender medical studies released in April that found there is “weak evidence” for offering puberty blockers to kids.
“In your opening brief, you did not mention any of these European developments,” he said. “In your reply brief, is it not true that you relegated the Cass report to a footnote?”
Alito also questioned Chase Strangio, the transgender attorney who argued before the court on behalf of private plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whether transgender identity is an “immutable” status. Some men who identify as women later come to again identify as male, he noted.
Alito: The Cass Report finds no evidence that gender affirmative treatments reduce suicide.
Strangio: “There is no evidence in those studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide… There are multiple studies that do show there is a reduction in suicidality [thoughts about suicide].”
Stunning… pic.twitter.com/N2vHtJye26
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 4, 2024
Strangio conceded that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming care.
That concession directly contradicts what parents of transgender teens are routinely told by “gender-affirming” doctors, who tell them that they need to put their kid on puberty blockers and ultimately give them sex-change surgery, because otherwise, their teen will commit suicide. The most famous transgender teen, Jazz Jennings, had a penis surgically removed at age 17, after being put on puberty blockers at age 11. Now, Jazz is miserable, and says “I don’t feel like me, ever.” Health providers falsely said that a sex change would make Jazz happy, and falsely told Jazz’s mother that Jazz was at risk for suicide if she didn’t allow Jazz to transition. “Do you want a live daughter or a dead son?,” they said.
But as Strangio conceded, it is “rare” for transgender teens to commit suicide when they don’t receive puberty blockers or other “gender-affirming care.” Advocates of gender transitions for children did a study of whether transgender teens benefited from puberty blockers, but then left if unpublished after it found no benefit — the results of the $9.7 million taxpayer-funded study have been left unpublished for years.
Sex changes may massively increase suicide risks, rather than reducing them, according to another recent study. “Gender-affirming surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks,” according to that study in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science.
Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, suggested the court should not venture into an area of contentious medical debate.
“It strikes me as a pretty heavy yellow light, if not red light, for this court to come in, the nine of us, and just constitutionalize the whole area when the rest of the world, or at least countries that have been at the forefront of this, are pumping the breaks on this kind of treatment because of concerns about the risks,” Kavanaugh said.
Tennessee lawmakers William Lamberth and Jack Johnson, who are behind the bill at the heart of today’s Supreme Court case, speak outside the court after oral arguments. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/axy3SLopRC
— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) December 4, 2024
Meanwhile, the three liberal justices voiced support for the government’s position, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson comparing bans on child sex changes to bans on interracial marriage. (RELATED: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Says Child Sex Change Bans Are ‘Sort Of The Same Thing’ As Interracial Marriage Bans)
“I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases,” Jackson said.
When Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice highlighted the irreparable harm that drugs like cross sex hormones can have on children’s bodies, Justice Sonia Sotomayor brushed off concerns.
“Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking Aspirin,” Sotomayor told Rice.
In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson could not provide a definition of the word “woman.”
Today, she heard oral arguments in a case that will determine if states can outlaw child sex changes. pic.twitter.com/6jb9EQs15O
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2024
Rice denied there was any sex-based line in Tennessee’s law, arguing the law draws a distinction based on medical purpose. Giving testosterone to a boy will allow the boy to “develop a normal body,” while giving it to a girl results in a “physical condition,” he explained.
Nearly half of U.S. states have passed similar laws banning sex change procedures for children.
In June, documents in another case challenging Alabama’s ban on child sex changes revealed the supposedly evidence-based medical standards created by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), which are cited by the Biden administration, had been influenced by political and litigation concerns. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pressured WPATH to remove the minimum age requirements for surgeries from its Standards of Care 8 guidelines.
An FDA official who supported giving kids puberty blockers noted that puberty blockers actually increase the risk of suicide. The Biden administration has promoted the use of puberty blockers for transgender children as part of “gender affirming care,” even though the FDA had earlier publicly warned that puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
Transgender treatments have significant side effects. A recent study shows 95% of young biological women on testosterone developed pelvic floor dysfunction. The participants had bladder and bowel symptoms that medics would expect to see in a woman after the menopause. The London Telegraph reported, “Around 87 per cent of the participants had urinary symptoms such as incontinence, frequent toilet visits and bed-wetting, while 74 per cent had bowel issues including constipation or being unable to hold stools or wind in. Some 53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction.”
Do No Harm, a medical watchdog group, recently published a database that found from 2019 to 2023, 13,994 children in the United States have received sex change-related treatments and 5,747 sex change surgeries had been performed on children. “Medical professionals must provide evidence-based care, not pursue a political agenda,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, told the DCNF. “We are committed to ending this predatory practice, which is harmful to the thousands of minors whose lives and bodies will never be the same.”
