Americans United has joined a legal brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to protect the rights of transgender children and their families.
During this term, the high court will hear U.S. v. Skrmetti, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender adolescents. Americans United, along with an array of civil rights organizations, joined families from Kentucky who are plaintiffs in Doe v. Thornbury, a challenge to a similar law in that state.
Aside from AU, organizations joining the brief include SAGE, National Trans Bar Association, LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York, Mazzoni Center and Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF). They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
The brief argues that the bans in Tennessee and Kentucky, like those passed in other states, intentionally discriminate against transgender youth by denying them medications that are prescribed for other youth. These laws do not ban these medications for all minors, but only when they are prescribed for transgender minors. As a result of this discriminatory treatment, transgender youth are unable to obtain the only effective treatment for the severe distress caused by gender dysphoria.
“By depriving transgender adolescents of essential medical care recommended by their treating professionals based on decades of research, these bans inflict irreparable harm on transgender youth and their families,” the brief asserts.
“If America is to make good on its promises of freedom without favor and equality without exception, families and their doctors, not politicians, must be able to make health care decisions for transgender youth,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United. “We urge the court to protect everyone’s right to live as their true selves, free from discrimination or litmus tests, and to access the medical care they need.”
Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, added, “Families, not the government, should make decisions about medical care. These bans target youth whose doctors have determined they need this care and whose parents have made informed decisions about what is best for their own children.”
The overwhelming consensus among medical professionals is that established medical treatments are safe, effective and necessary to protect transgender adolescents’ well-being. Yet, 26 states, often prodded by Christian Nationalist groups, have passed laws banning essential medical care for transgender youth.
Across the country, federal district courts have held that bans like those in Tennessee and Kentucky single out transgender youth in order to deny them safe, effective and well-established medical care.
In the Skrmetti case, the Supreme Court agreed to review a ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that reversed a district court decision blocking these bans in Tennessee and Kentucky. The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the Tennessee case, and the U.S. Solicitor General will argue against the ban when the high court hears arguments in the case later this year.
The Kentucky families’ brief is among dozens of friend-of-the-court briefs filed. Bioethicists, medical providers, medical historians, family law professors and additional families in states where care has been banned are among many who are urging the Supreme Court to rule against bans on essential medical care for transgender adolescents so that families can make the health care decisions that are best for their children.