The Supreme Court will challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender reassignment surgery for minors on Wednesday. It’s a decision that could play a role in shaping the future of girls’ sports and preventing it from happening biological men future generations will not be able to compete with female athletes.
The case known as US vs Skrmetti, will focus on a law signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee in 2023. The law, SB 1, bans hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors in the state and imposes civil penalties on doctors who violate the bans.
The law is intended to prevent such access to “a minor who identifies with, or lives as, a perceived identity inconsistent with the minor’s gender,” or to address “any perceived inconvenience or distress resulting from a discrepancy between the gender of the minor and the alleged identity”.
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These drugs and procedures, when administered to minors, have created a pathway for biological males to compete on girls’ youth sports teams across the country.
Lawmakers in Tennessee have advised minors to “appreciate their sex, especially as they enter puberty.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for the Biden administration and transgender youth in Tennessee will pressure the judges to declare the 2023 law unconstitutional. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, arguing will be the first openly transgender attorney to bring a case before the Supreme Court on behalf of the families.
Tennessee is one of 23 states with such a law in place to prevent these treatments from being available to minors. Tennessee is also one of 23 states that has introduced a law to limit or prevent trans athletes in girls’ sports, but that issue was not contested Wednesday.
Lee signed the state’s ban on trans athletes in April 2022, and it went into effect in July of that year. But even states that have passed these laws have seen federal judges allow trans athletes in those states to still compete with girls and share locker rooms with girls.
SUPREME COURT WEIGHS STATE BAN ON TRANSGENDER ‘MEDICAL TREATMENT’ FOR MINORS
Judges Landya McCafferty of New Hampshire and M. Hannah Lauck of Virginia, both appointed during the Obama administration, each issued rulings this year that allowed biological males to play on high school football and tennis teams . McCafferty issued an order allowing two transgender athletes to compete in New Hampshire, while Lauck ruled that an 11-year-old transgender tennis player could compete against girls of the same age in Virginia.
In California, a state with laws to protect trans athletes in girls’ sports, several high schools have been embroiled in scandals involving trans athletes on girls’ teams and the female athletes not accepting them.
A recent lawsuit by female athletes at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, have claimed that their “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts were likened to a swastika by school officials. The plaintiffs had worn the shirts after a transgender athlete, who had not consistently attended practices or met core varsity eligibility requirements, was placed on the varsity team, driving one of the girls from her spot, the complaint said.
A girls cross country runner at the school, Rylee Morrowmade an impassioned plea at a school board meeting on Nov. 21, when she denounced her school, saying the way things are being handled makes her feel “unsafe.”
“The entire LGBTQ thing is being shoved down our throats!” Morrow cried.
“It’s not okay that I have to be in a position, and I have to see a man in shorts, and have to see that around me. As a 16-year-old girl, I don’t see that as a safe environment,” Morrow said. If I go to a locker room and see men there, I don’t think it’s safe. I don’t think it’s safe to go to the toilet when there are boys there. That’s not okay. I am a 16 year old girl.”
In Washington, another state with laws to protect trans inclusion, the Central Valley School Board voted to send a letter to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, ask for change its policies that have allowed trans athletes to compete with girls.
One of the women who advocated for it, an unknown current cross-country skier, shared her experience during the hearing of having to compete against one of those athletes.
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“When I was running across the country for Greenacres Middle School, a boy who was biologically male, but identified as female, competed on the girls’ team,” she said. “While I respect everyone’s right to participate in sports, the situation made me question the fairness of competing against someone who had the physical advantage associated with male biology.”
Most policies that allow trans athletes to compete include clauses that require athletes to have undergone the types of treatments and medications that Tennessee wants to ban for minors. If these aren’t available to minors, the number of trans athletes competing on those teams would likely decrease significantly, at least at the youth level.
The Supreme Court’s decision will set a historical precedent and determine the course of many lives and athletic careers.
In August, the court ruled 5-4 in denying the Biden administration an emergency request to enforce parts of a new rule that includes anti-discrimination protections for transgender students under Title IX.
The request would have permitted biological males in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories in ten states where state and local rules are in place to prevent this.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was the only conservative justice to dissent from that decision.
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