The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday accepted a case that could potentially allow transgender children in Kentucky to receive gender-affirming hormone treatment.
Wide range Major Medical Associations The lawmakers argue that transgender youth should not be barred from receiving gender-reassignment treatments, such as puberty-delaying drugs or estrogen or testosterone treatments, but Kentucky and 24 other states have passed laws in recent years restricting such treatments for minors amid a surge in anti-transgender rhetoric from Republican lawmakers.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case focusing on such a law passed in Tennessee, which is good news for the ACLU of Kentucky, which is representing plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit challenging the legality of the Bluegrass State’s own ban on gender-affirming care.
“We’re very pleased that the Supreme Court will revisit its decision and consider what we believe was an error,” said Corey Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU.
The ruling in question is a September 2023 decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which dismissed legal injunctions that temporarily blocked bans on gender-affirming care for minors in both Tennessee and Kentucky, instead allowing the laws to remain in effect while lawsuits challenging those laws make their way through the judicial system.
The ruling means that transgender Kentuckians under the age of 18 cannot receive gender-affirming hormone therapy in their home state.
The Supreme Court could change that: If it finds the 6th Circuit wrong, it could reinstate a temporary injunction against the Kentucky law that a federal district judge granted last June, Shapiro said.
If that happens, transgender young people could once again begin receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy, at least while widespread litigation over the ban continues.
“If the Supreme Court reverses the Sixth Circuit decision, the preliminary injunction will be reinstated and the law will be unenforceable,” he said.
The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision in the Tennessee case could also have even broader implications, depending on how narrowly or broadly it’s written, said Abigail Moncrieff, co-director of the Center for Health Law and Policy at Cleveland State University.
Because the Supreme Court is the highest judicial branch in the United States, its decisions influence how lower court judges decide future cases on similar subject matter.
The question at the heart of the case accepted by the Supreme Court is whether Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender children violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from denying people gender-affirming medical care. Equal protection under the law?
The question is Various lawsuits Similar bans are being challenged in other states, including Kentucky.
“Certainly there will be some impact,” Moncrieff said of the Supreme Court’s final decision on the case, expected by next summer. “Whether there’s a definitive answer to the question of which laws are permissible and which laws are not will depend in part on how the judge writes the decision and what conclusions they reach.”
“These things are very hard to predict,” she said.
