WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 4 over Tennessee’s ban on gender-altering procedures for minors, teeing up a potentially game-changing decision for precedent on this issue.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Chase Strangio and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the court to remand or send Tennessee’s law back to a lower court for reconsideration. Prelogar said the law represented a form of sex-based discrimination that should be scrutinized more heavily under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice told the court that the law didn’t create a classification based on sex but instead was focused on the purpose of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. The equal protection clause, he said, doesn’t require states to “blind themselves to medical reality.” He also compared the medical community’s acceptance of gender procedures to previous acceptance of eugenics and lobotomies….