The Supreme Court on Wednesday morning upheld Tennessee’s law banning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors who identify as transgender, ruling in a 6-3 decision that states have the authority to regulate such treatments.
“Our role … is only to ensure that [the law] does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.”
The ruling, backed by all six conservative justices and opposed by the three liberal justices, allows Tennessee to enforce its 2023 law. The law prohibits the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for gender transition in minors while allowing those same drugs for other medical conditions. Health care providers who violate the law face civil penalties and the loss of their medical licenses.
The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has upheld a state-level ban on transgender procedures for children. The decision affirms the states’ right to restrict medical interventions on minors—setting a legal precedent for the 24 other states that have enacted similar laws, NBC News noted.
The Tennessee case, according to the majority opinion, “carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field.”
The Department of Health and Human Services in May released a comprehensive review warning that sex-change surgeries and interventions for minors carry “significant risks” and “very weak evidence of benefit.”
Most transgender procedures—including puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and sex-change surgeries—cause “irreversible physical or physiological effects,” HHS researchers wrote in the 409-page report, citing “systematic reviews of evidence around the world.”
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