The U.S. Supreme Court will begin its new term in October. Two cases up for review are especially worth noting. They involve challenges to state laws dealing with the well-being of children — one that stops them being given dangerous medical treatment under the guise of changing their sexual identity and one that protects them from pornography. 

That such safeguards are being opposed speaks volumes about the disturbing times in which we live.

 

U.S. v. Skrmetti

The first case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, involves a challenge to the constitutionality of Tennessee’s ban on “transgender” medical interventions on minors.
In March 2023, Tennessee passed S.B. 1, a law that prohibits health-care providers from “prescribing, administering or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone” if the treatment is to “enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” 

Violators are subject to civil penalties of $25,000, professional discipline and potential civil liability. (The law also bars surgical procedures undertaken for the same purpose, but the constitutionality of that restriction is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court.)

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, three minors who claim a transgender identity, their parents and a doctor who promotes these interventions in young patients filed suit last year in federal court. They argue that the Tennessee law violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.

A federal district court initially blocked Tennessee from enforcing the law. The court asserted that “parents have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children, which naturally includes the right of parents to request certain medical treatments on behalf of their children” and that the law infringes on this right in violation of due process. The trial court also concluded that the Tennessee law violates the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantee because it prohibits medical procedures for transgender adolescents that it would allow for other adolescents. 

The gender-obsessed Biden-Harris Department of Justice intervened on appeal, also arguing that the Tennessee law was unconstitutional. A divided panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit disagreed, reversing the lower court to allow the Tennessee law and a similar ban that passed in Kentucky to take effect despite the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

Writing for the panel’s majority, Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton shared a concern held by countless people in the face of the transgender craze: 

“This is a relatively new diagnosis with ever-shifting approaches to care over the last decade or two. Under these circumstances, it is difficult for anyone to be sure about predicting the long-term consequences of abandoning age limits of any sort for these treatments.”

Judge Sutton is right. While many medical associations inexplicably continue to support gender-transition procedures, the evidence in support of them is “remarkably weak,” according to the “Cass Review,” a recent comprehensive study commissioned by the U.K.’s National Health Service. 

European nations are now restricting minors’ access to transgender procedures. In addition, the World Health Organization has noted the paucity of evidence to support minors receiving this massively controversial treatment. And recently disclosed documents show that even staff at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) acknowledge that child gender-transition procedures are experimental and that children opting for them are unaware of the lifelong medical ramifications of the treatments. That gender ideologues continue to demand these questionable interventions for dysphoric children is frightening. 

Sutton also argued that this is the kind of situation in which life-tenured judges interpreting a difficult-to-amend Constitution should be “humble and careful” about announcing new substantive constitutional rights that “limit accountable elected officials from sorting out these medical, social, and policy challenges.” 

Neither the Biden-Harris administration nor the American Civil Liberties Union have taken heed. They instead continue to advance numerous specious theories in papers filed with the Supreme Court. From arguing that the ban is form of unlawful sex-based classification to asserting that “transgenderism” is a protected class, none of their arguments holds water. 

But what about the rights of parents who want their child to undergo such treatments? While the Supreme Court has affirmed it “cannot now be doubted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody and control of their children,” this right has been recognized in narrow areas such as education, religion, custody and visitation. The Supreme Court has never extended parental rights to include access to certain medical or experimental drug treatments for children, and there is no basis to argue that such a right is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and traditions.

The Supreme Court’s review of Tennessee’s ban on the use of puberty blockers and hormones in cases of gender dysphoria in minors offers hope that the gender craze among young people can be slowed down, safeguarding the Constitution from being weaponized by gender ideologues within the federal government and their allies.

 

Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton

The second case already on the Court’s docket, Free Speech Coalition Inc. v. Paxton, considers whether Texas can bar minors from accessing pornographic websites by requiring users to enter personal information to verify their age. The case centers on Texas H.B. 1181, which requires pornography companies to impose age-verification measures. Users have to prove they are adults by showing identification or other methods. A company that violates the state’s requirement could face civil fines of more than $10,000.

The plaintiffs, identified by their lawyers at the ACLU as “the Free Speech Coalition, plus creators and distributors of adult content and a ‘performer’ for adult websites,” challenged the law, saying the age-verification process infringes on adult use of pornographic sites by requiring too much personal information and interferes with First Amendment rights.

The district court agreed with the ACLU and company and issued a preliminary injunction. But a divided 5th Circuit panel vacated that injunction with respect to the age-verification provision, explaining that the burden on adults’ First Amendment rights only has to have some rational basis — not face strict scrutiny — because the aim is to protect children. 

Taken together, these two cases underline the desperate nature of threats facing children — and the fact that powerful, well-funded institutions want to do them harm. It is shocking that our nation has arrived at a place where we need laws to protect minors from medical mutilation and pornography.