The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will take up a case on a state law that bans medically transitioning children.
The nation’s highest court will take up U.S. v. Skrmetti in October, which involves Tennesee’s ban on hormone inhibitors, the facilitation of transgender hormone usage, and sex alteration surgeries for minors. The Biden administration sued the state over the law last year, as did the LGBTQ activist group Human Rights Campaign.
“Rather than tackle any real issue at stake for Tennesseans, the legislature and Governor Lee decided to attack vulnerable youth who are at the mercy of politicians who think they know better than families, doctors, and the greater medical community,” Kelley Robinson, the president of Human Rights Campaign, said in a press release. “Gender affirming care is life-saving care. Period.”
According to Fox News, this will mark the first time the high court hears a case on the banning of transgender procedures. Similar laws were passed in 23 states, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
A federal appeals court allowed Tennessee and Kentucky’s ban to remain in place pending an outcome in the lawsuit.
Texas passed a ban on minors being medically transitioned last year, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. The law was met with a lawsuit that made its way to the Texas Supreme Court earlier this year.
The Texas ban was passed weeks after a whistleblower revealed Texas Children’s Hospital continued its transgender program for minors after promising to end it over legal concerns. The whistleblower at the hospital, Dr. Eithan Haim, faces four felony counts of violating medical record laws from the Department of Justice, as reported by DX.
“The reason they have to come after me is to make an example out of me so other whistleblowers don’t speak out like I did,” Haim previously told DX. “In this case, the process is the punishment.”
“My ability to work is at risk. I may miss the birth of my first child,” he continued. “This is the punishment they want to impose in order to prevent other people from exposing the truth.”