(Washington) The majority conservative Supreme Court authorized Tennessee on Wednesday to prohibit transgender minors with access to transitional treatments, a subject of profound tension in American society.
This decision could be fraught with consequences, half of the American states having prohibited the treatments for minors who do not recognize themselves in their kind of birth.
Out of 1.6 million people defining themselves as transgender in the United States, more than 300,000 are aged 13 to 17, more than a third of whom live in one of these states, according to a study by Williams Institute, a reflection group of UCLA University.
By six votes against three, those of the conservative judges against the progressives, the Supreme Court considers that the law adopted in 2023 by Tennessee, prohibiting transgender minors with access to puberty blockers and hormonal transitional treatments, does not present discriminatory.
Minors and their families, a gynecologist from Memphis as well as the previous democratic administration of Joe Biden said that this law raped on the 14the Amendment of the Constitution on the “equal protection” of citizens since it deprives transgender people access to treatments authorized to others for medical reasons.
But the Court, in a decision written by its president John Roberts, proves them wrong and relys on the will “of the people, its elected representatives and the democratic process”, considering that it does not belong to him to pronounce on “wisdom, equity or logic” of the law.
“This file brings the weight of lively scientific debates and public policy regarding the safety, the efficiency and the adequacy of medical treatments in a field in full evolution,” also underlines the majority.
Conversely, judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a written opinion of disagreement to which her two progressive colleagues associate, criticizes the decision to “twist logic and jurisprudence” to conclude that the law of Tennessee is not discriminatory while it “expressly categorizes on the basis of sex and transgender status”.
“The Court thus abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” she deplores.
“Common sense”
The very conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) praised an “immense victory” which “will help protect the other 26 similar laws adopted by states and bring common sense into the American medical system”.
An association of pediatricians claiming 67,000 members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), however, denounced “a dangerous precedent of legislative interference in the exercise of medicine”.
Transitional treatments “are medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria and are validated by decades of research, clinical experience and scientific consensus,” she said in a statement.
Gender dysphoria designates the state of suffering experienced by children or adolescents in the face of the inadequacy between their gender identity and sex assigned to birth.
During the debates in December, the Biden administration and the complainants had criticized the law for completely prohibiting transitional treatments to minors without taking into consideration their advantages, such as the significant reduction in cases of depression and suicidal thoughts.
This law aims to protect minors from medical intervention “risky and likely to have often irreversible consequences”, had argued the representative of Tennessee.
Since his return to the White House in January, Donald Trump has returned to a series of achievements obtained by transgender people.
The Republican President has signed a decree ending public aid for gender transitional treatments, chemicals and surgicals, promising to oppose all legal means.
“Throughout the country, health professionals mutilate and sterilize a growing number of influencing children,” according to the text of the decree.
The Republicans have made attacks against the place of transgender people one of their battle horses against “wokism”, the well-thoughts of which they tax Democrat.
