Scotus News
By Amy Howe
On 7 February 2025
At. 15.12
United States v. Skretti were argued on December 4th. (Katie Barlow)
The Trump administration on Friday informed the Supreme Court that a Tennessee law prohibiting the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors does not violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. But even though this attitude is a change from the one put forward by the Biden administration as the judges heard oral argument in a challenge for the law in December, the Trump administration nevertheless called on the Supreme Court to move on and decide the dispute.
The trial now in court was originally filed by three transient teens and their parents against the state officials who were responsible for enforcing the ban. They claimed that the law, known as the SB1, violates the Constitution because it prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to confirm the gender identity of transient teens, but allows the use of the same treatments for other purposes.
The Biden -Administration took up the case and stood on a federal law that allows it to do so in cases involving equal protection “if the lawyer confirms that the case is of general public importance.”
After a shared US appeal for the 6th circuit that maintained the ban, both the Biden administration and the families came to the Supreme Court and asked the judges to weigh. The judges only awarded the Biden – administration’s petition to review – which focused on questions of equal protection – but a lawyer for families also argued on their behalf on December 4th.
There has generally been a long -lasting tradition that, even after a change from a democratic administration to a Republican or vice versa, the federal government maintains the same legal attitude in cases that were already before the right of the benefits. In both the first Trump administration and the Biden – the administration, however, gave up the US lawyer – the government’s supreme lawyer in the Supreme Court – from this practice and turned the course in several cases before the court.
The letter from Deputy General Court Curtis Gannon, who informed the judges that “the government’s previously stated views” in the Tennessee case “No longer represent the united states’ attitude” did not come as a surprise. On January 28, President Donald Trump issued an executive order limiting gender -affirming care of transgender people under 19 (Gannon stated that acting lawyer Sarah Harris was resumed from the case, presumably because her husband, Jeffrey Harris, was among the lawyers representing Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skretti in the case.)
Department of Justice, Gannon continued, “has now decided that SB1 does not refuse equal protection,” and it “would not have intervened to challenge” the law – “so much less sought” Supreme Court Review of the 6th Circuit’s decision by maintaining the law .
But the case should nevertheless not be rejected, Gannon claimed, because the judges’ quick resolution of the “equal protection issue” will carry many cases pending in the lower courts. ” And the families remain on the opposite side of the dispute from state officials, Gannon noted, so there is still a living controversy. Therefore, he concluded that the Supreme Court could decide the same matter of protection without having to give the families’ petition to review or seek “further, probably duplicative briefing from the same parties about the same appeal court in the underlying case between the private plaintiffs and the state respondents. “
A decision in the case is expected in the summer.
This article was originally published on Howe on the field.
