(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Dec. 4 in a case challenging a bill that prohibits gender-affirming surgeries and treatments for minors.
Senate Bill 1 passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2023 and signed by Gov. Bill Lee would have taken effect on July 1, 2023.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld filed a suit, saying the law violated the 14th Amendment.
The law bans health-care providers from performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors or prescribing hormones or puberty blockers to minors.
“Laws like Tennessee’s are not benign regulations of medical care; they are discriminatory efforts to exclude transgender people from the protections of the Constitution,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a release earlier this month. “These bans represent a dangerous and discriminatory affront to the well-being of transgender youth across the country and their constitutional right to equal protection under the law.”
Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said previously he looks forward to fighting the case in the country’s highest court.
“We fought hard to defend Tennessee’s law protecting kids from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion from the 6th Circuit,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “This case will bring much-needed clarity to whether the Constitution contains special protections for gender identity.”