By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration told the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday that Tennessee’s Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors is not unlawful, reversing the position taken by the government under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.
The justices heard arguments on December 4, with conservative justices signaling their willingness to uphold the measure. Those arguments came in an appeal by Biden’s administration of a lower court’s decision upholding Tennessee’s law.
It will be up to the Supreme Court to decide how to proceed. In a letter to the court, Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon suggested that the justices press ahead and decide the case anyway, rather than dismiss it.
The Biden administration and other challengers had argued that Tennessee’s law violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of equal protection.
“Following the change in administration, the Department of Justice has reconsidered the United States’ position in this case,” Gannon wrote in his letter.
Gannon said the department has now determined that Tennessee’s law “does not deny equal protection on account of sex or any other characteristic.”
The new administration’s shift in the case reflects the Republican president’s hard-line stance toward transgender rights. Trump began his second term as president on Jan. 20.
Tennessee’s law bars medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria, the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
Gannon suggested in the letter that despite the government’s shift of position, the court should not dismiss the case. “The court’s prompt resolution of the question presented will bear on many cases pending in the lower courts,” he wrote.
He noted that a group of transgender plaintiffs and their families who challenged the law have also participated in the case. The court allowed an attorney for those plaintiffs to present arguments when the justices heard the case.
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Tennessee’s ban is one of two dozen similar policies enacted by conservative state lawmakers around the country. A broader set of restrictions have been enacted in recent years by various U.S. states targeting transgender people, from bathroom use to sports participation.
On the day he returned to office, Trump signed an executive order targeting “gender ideology” and declared that the U.S. government would recognize two sexes: male and female. Trump also rescinded orders by Biden combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
A federal judge blocked Tennessee’s law as likely violating the 14th Amendment. The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed the judge’s preliminary injunction.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Will Dunham)
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