The upcoming Supreme Court decision on child transsexuality

From Brandon ShowalterOpinion writer and social commentator Friday, June 28, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider state bans on giving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and performing transgender surgeries on minors. And there’s no guarantee these laws will stand up to scrutiny.

Court observers should abandon the notion that everything will go smoothly just because the majority of justices are currently appointed by Republicans. Far from it. Supreme Court decisions are notoriously unpredictable, with many extenuating circumstances and thorny legal issues often at play. And in my view, the upholding of a law prohibiting hormonal and surgical transsexualization of children depends on the opinion of one justice in particular: Neil Gorsuch.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case LW against Skrmettiand it’s about whether the Constitution allows states – in this case, Tennessee – to restrict experimental gender-affirming medical practices on minors. Meanwhile, an amorphous, fictional ghost from a relatively recent Supreme Court ruling haunts this upcoming case.

Writing for the majority in the 6-3 ruling in the 2020 case Bostock v. Clayton CountyJudge Gorsuch anchored “transgender status” in the context of Title VII, the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that relates to employment discrimination. Bostock The ruling consolidated three cases, one of which involved Aimee Stephens, a now-deceased man who claimed to be a woman and was fired after refusing to follow the dress code at a Michigan funeral home where he used to work. Firing someone based on their “transgender status,” whatever that means, constitutes sex discrimination under Title VII, according to the majority opinion.

Although the court specifically stated that the ruling was narrowly applicable in the employment context, this has not stopped the Biden administration from inappropriately relying on Bostock to legitimize gender ideology in many areas of public policy. In his scathing dissent in the case, Justice Samuel Alito predicted that “while the Court may not want to think about the consequences of its decision, we cannot avoid these questions for too long,” adding that “the entire federal judiciary will be mired in disputes over the scope of the Court’s reasoning for years to come.”

Needless to say, Alito has shown foresight given the abundance of sensitive disputes currently underway on these issues.

Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh were the other dissenters in Bostock and it is hard to imagine that her thinking has changed. It is equally hard to imagine Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic mother of seven, who joined the court months after Bostock was decided by voting to allow transsexuality among minors.

While I would be happy if I’m wrong, as the political left defends all things LGBT-related (especially the “T”) with religious zeal, I fully expect liberal Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson to vote to strike down Tennessee’s ban. Chief Justice Roberts, who has repeatedly shown he has no appetite for thorny social issues, will likely join the dissenting opinion. Again, I would be happy if I’m wrong.

That leaves Gorsuch, who would win as the fifth vote – assuming that Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett stick together.

It seems inevitable that his claim that “transgender status” represents a significant ontological category of personhood needs to be addressed. If this was relevant to Title VII, it is certainly relevant in the area of ​​pediatrics and whether or not states can set limits in the interest of protecting children, particularly when the treatments are experimental and invasive.

Does anyone have a “gender identity” or alternative gender status that only they know about? Do children? If children have such an identity and therefore require risky medical interventions to alleviate the psychological distress associated with it, can they give informed consent to prevent their fertility through puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones? There is indeed a lot at stake here with Gorsuch’s formulation of “transgender status.”

Gorsuch now finds himself in the unenviable position of having to explain exactly what he meant by “transgender status,” even though there is no serious scientific evidence, no brain imaging, no blood test, and no genetic marker that definitively proves its existence. Every definition activists have ever insisted on of what “trans” is is either based on cultural stereotypes or is completely circular, attempting to impose concrete legal meaning on incoherent meaninglessness. But there is essentially nothing to it. Simply put, it is a complete lie.

The Supreme Court takes over LW against Skrmetti is an important step in the long-awaited investigation of what many – myself included – consider to be one of the most horrific child abuse cases and one of the most egregious medical scandals in history.

If the judges uphold a state ban on so-called “gender-affirming grooming” for minors, it would reduce the number of children experimented on in this way. This is obviously an objectively good thing.

Such a ruling, however, will not take into account the fact that states like California have gone the opposite way and become a “transgender sanctuary,” allowing family courts and other state agencies to carry out these practices on minors from other states who make it to the Golden State against their parents’ wishes. Caution and sobriety are called for when we consider the extent of the damage this ideology has caused and when we consider what it will take to pick up the pieces.

We hope that the upcoming decision in LW against Skrmetti will be based on the biological sciences and will usher in a return to much-needed sanity and reality – namely, that there are only two sexes and no psychological “status” or fanciful concept of “gender” can ever change this brutal fact.

When Judge Gorsuch finally writes the opinion on this matter, it would be wise for him to Bostock Word salad overall.

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