Georgians following Supreme Court case on gender-affirming care
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - As the conservative-heavy U.S. Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors, Georgians are closely watching.
The two southern states are among a group of 26 that have ed bans or restrictions on hormone therapy and testosterone use for transgender minors even with parental consent.
The court’s ruling, while it won’t come for a few months, could set up further changes to the landscape of LGBTQ and women’s rights in the future.
“This is the first constitutional case looking at gender identity issues and I think the court recognizes that this will have a potentially significant precedential effect,” said Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, the plaintiff in the case.
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If the court upholds Tennessee’s ban, it could open the door to restrictions on gender affirming care for minors and possibly the roll back of civil protections for other of the LGBTQ community.
“I think it has been open season on transgender individuals in this country,” said Thomas Mew, an Atlanta-based attorney who argued a landmark gay rights case before the Supreme Court in 2019.
Bostock v Clayton County added sexuality and gender identity as protections under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mew says a decision to uphold the Tennessee ban on minor gender affirming care could present a massive set back to progress made in civil liberties for LGBTQ people.
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“Let’s not forget, while the issue before the court is gender affirming care for minors, it can certainly have broader implications for adult transgender individuals and of course for individuals more broadly in laws that discriminate on the basis of sex,” he said. “When we have questioning from Supreme Court Justices that suggests there may be some type of erosion of the standards that are typically followed in these types of equal protection challenges, it’s very concerning.”
The issue of a national ban on gender affirming care for minors has also been part of the discussion. Speaking on the same day justices argued the case, Skrmetti said it was more about letting states decide through their own legislatures.
“I think a federal ban is a much different issue, there are other constitutional issues involved in that, limits on the federal power. This is all about the state’s ability to make its decisions for itself,” he said. “There is a huge downside for kids and the state’s job is to protect them in an area of unsettled science.”
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According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, there are around 300,000 minors in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender.
“Laws like this, clearly, are designed to prevent parents from making the decisions they think are in their child’s best interest,” said Mew. “It often puts them between a rock and a hard place. ‘We can’t stay in this state’ but maybe they don’t have the resources to move to another state or maybe all their job ties and everything else are here.”
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