MARK SHERMAN | Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The federal government no longer backs transgender minors and their families in Tennessee who are challenging a state ban on gender-affirming care, the Trump administration told the Supreme Court Friday, Feb. 7.
The federal government has changed its position in U.S. v. Skrmetti and is now aligned with the Tennessee respondents in the landmark case challenging Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormone therapies for transgender adolescents.
The court’s conservatives, at arguments in December, had already seemed likely to uphold the state ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments. A decision is expected from the court by June.
The challenge to Tennessee’s ban was originally brought on behalf of three transgender adolescents, their families and a Memphis-based physician by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
The United States filed to intervene in that challenge and then filed an application for review to the Supreme Court alongside the private plaintiffs, who filed their own application in November 2023. In June 2024, the Supreme Court granted review of the United States’s petition.
Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal and Akin Gump issued a joint statement Friday: “Tennessee’s discriminatory and baseless ban continues to upend the lives of our plaintiffs — transgender adolescents, their families and a medical provider. These Tennesseans have had their constitutional right to equal protection under the law violated by the state of Tennessee. This latest move from the Trump administration is another indication that they are using the power of the federal government to target marginalized groups for further discrimination.
“We condemn this latest move and will continue to fight to vindicate the constitutional rights of all LGBTQ people.”
“We condemn this latest move and will continue to fight to vindicate the constitutional rights of all LGBTQ people.”
Attorneys for plaintiffs in U.S vs. Skrmetti
The formal notification of the change is the latest in a flurry of actions by the new administration regarding transgender people. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in his second week in office halting federal support for gender-affirming health care for transgender people under age 19.
The Tennessee law known as SB1 is similar to measures in about half the states that prohibit gender-affirming care for minors.
The Biden administration had intervened in the Tennessee case, arguing that the restrictions amount to unconstitutional sex discrimination and warning that the court’s decision in favor of the state could lead to restrictions on transgender adults.
But with the anti-trans Trump administration now controlling the White House, that position has changed.
“The department has now determined that SB1 does not deny equal protection on account of sex or any other characteristic,” Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon wrote in a letter to the court. “Accordingly, the new administration would not have intervened to challenge SB1 — let alone sought this court’s review of the court of appeals’ decision” effectively upholding the law.
But the justices still should go ahead and decide the Tennessee case, Gannon said, because the transgender minors and their parents also are involved, and it would be inefficient to order a new round of legal briefing.
Since returning to the presidency last month, Trump has signed orders that define the sexes as unchangeable, open the door to banning transgender people from military service, call for new rules about how schools can teach about gender and set the stage to ban transgender women and girl athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Several of the measures have already been challenged in court.
