The Supreme Court’s Messy Transgender Ruling Today

Today the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors, marking a significant setback in transgender care and parental choice. Here's why the decision was a mess.

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Today’s issue: The Supreme Court’s Messy Transgender Ruling Today

✅ NOTE: Today’s issue was supposed to encompass all of the SCOTUS decisions that are still to be decided, but this morning, one such case was ruled on. The effects of it will be felt by transgender youth all over the country.

Previous Issue: Who Decides If We Go To War With Iran? (available here)

Next Issue: The Major SCOTUS Decisions Still To Be Decided This Term

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💡As always, paid subscribers can find the embedded audio voiceover below the “Part 1” header of this issue.

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ConLaw Lesson #43: The Supreme Court’s Messy Transgender Ruling Today

Today, the Supreme Court delivered the most consequential ruling in recent memory for transgender youth and their families.

In a 6–3 decision, the Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors — effectively giving states broad authority to deny treatments that every major medical association considers essential, and in many cases, even lifesaving.

The decision marks a seismic shift in how constitutional protections apply to one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. It’s not just a legal turning point — it’s a human one. And it’s a sign that the highest court in the land is willing to let politics, not medicine, decide who gets care and who doesn’t — because despite the Court’s language about issuing a decision that honored the Equal Protection Clause (while simultaneously hinting that the decision, for possibly the majority of justices, was not the morally correct one…), the result was it upheld a law that not just restricts transgender minors from healthcare necessities, but also prevents parents from making those decisions in support of their transgender kids.

Meaning it’s hard to read this decision as anything else other than a political choice that will further separate states from one another in divisive policy choices.

So today, let’s talk about what it means, who it affects, what the research actually says about transgender youth and healthcare, and what happens now.

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🚨 Part 1: So What Exactly Happened?

(Full audio narration by me, as well as the full text, available for paid subscribers. These lessons take hours to put together, so we’d love to have you on the journey.)