US Supreme Court supports law that prohibits gender transition for minors

The United States Supreme Court on Wednesday supported a state law that prohibits the access of minors to gender transition treatments, a issue that generates controversy in the country.

AFP

About twenty states governed by Republicans have promulgated laws that restrict medical care for transgender young people.

By six votes against three, the highest court voted in favor of guaranteeing the Tennessee Law that prohibits hormonal treatments, puberty blockers and gender transition surgery for children under 18.

«The role of the Court is not to ‘judge wisdom, equity or logic’ (of the law) but only to ensure that the law does not violate the guarantees of equal protection,» wrote the president of the Court, John Roberts.

«He does not» because the issues related to the policy «are therefore left appropriately, in the hands of the people, their chosen representatives and the democratic process,» he added.

The Supreme Court heard the allegations in December. The Department of Justice of the then President, the Democrat Joe Biden, joined the opponents of Tennessee’s law, with the argument that the equal clause of the Constitution violates for denying transgender people access to medical treatments granted to others.

His successor, Republican Donald Trump, signed a decree that restricts gender transition procedures for minors.

Although there is no national law in the United States against gender medical treatments for transgender young people, Trump’s order ended any federal support for such procedures.

– «Dangerous precedent» –

The American Pediatrics Academy (AAP) estimates that «it establishes a dangerous precedent for legislative interference in the practice of medicine.»

«Affirmative gender care is medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria and is backed by decades of research,» he added.

«To deny patients access to this care not only undermines their health and safety, but steals basic human dignity,» he insists.

The alliance defending freedom, a conservative legal group, applauded the sentence, which considers a «great victory for children» and a «step towards the end of dangerous experiments.»

During the oral arguments in December, Tennessee’s attorney general Matthew Rice told the Court that the law was approved to «protect minors from risky and not proven medical interventions» with «often irreversible consequences and that they alter life»

Chase Strangio, a lawyer from the powerful American union of civil liberties, who represents three transgender teenagers, his parents and a gynecologist from Memphis, counterattacked by saying that Tennessee’s law has «eliminated the only treatment that alleviates years of suffering» for the plaintiffs.

«What they have done is to impose a clumsy prohibition, canceling the very careful judgment of the parents who love and care for their children and the doctors who have recommended the treatment,» said Strangio, the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the highest court.

– Trump Decree –

In his investiture speech, Trump said his government would only recognize two genres, male and female, and signed an executive order on January 28 that restricts gender transition procedures for minors.

«Throughout the country, medical professionals mutilan and sterilize a growing number of children,» reads the decree.

«This dangerous trend will be a stain in the history of our nation, and must end,» he adds.

Trump’s decree prohibits financing gender transition under the Medicaid health insurance program for poor families, the Medicare system used by retirees and defense department insurance that covers about two million children.

According to a study by the Williams Institute, a reflection group of the UCLA University, it is estimated that 1.6 million people 13 years or older in the United States are identified as transgender.