The Trump administration has changed the federal government’s position in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti, the challenge brought by trans rights advocates to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in December.
The Biden administration joined the case on the side of the plaintiffs, who include the families of several trans kids as well as health care providers who say that Tennessee’s ban, also known as S.B. 1, violates their constitutional right to equal protection under the law since S.B. 1 bans transgender youth from accessing certain treatments but allows cisgender youth to get those same treatments.
But on Friday, Deputy Solicitor General Curtis E. Gannon, a Trump appointee, sent a letter to the Court saying that the government changed its position in the case.
“Last year, the United States filed briefs contending that S.B.1 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Gannon wrote. “The United States advanced the same position at oral argument. Following the change in Administration, the Department of Justice has reconsidered the United States’ position in this case. The purpose of this letter is to notify the Court that the government’s previously stated views no longer represent the United States’ position.”
Former President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have taken vastly different positions when it comes to allowing transgender people to make their own decisions about their own health care. Biden’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, argued at the Supreme Court in December on the side of trans equality, telling the Court that there were parallels between Tennessee’s ban on trans rights and previous cases involving civil rights, like Loving v. Virginia. She argued that the only difference between trans youth and cis youth seeking the same treatments is their sex assigned at birth, which means that denying the treatment to a trans teen but not a cis teen violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
But Trump reversed the federal government’s position on the issue, going so far as to sign an executive order to ban gender-affirming care. His order would block trans youth and some trans adults under the age of 19 from accessing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery. It would also end all funding to hospitals and medical schools that research, teach about, or provide gender-affirming care.
There has been a wave of states passing bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth since Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden. No state banned gender-affirming care for trans youth prior to Arkansas banning the treatments in 2021, and now over half of states do.
Tennessee’s S.B. 1 was passed in 2023. The law required all trans minors receiving gender-affirming care in the state to de-transition by last April and restricts all gender-affirming care for trans minors henceforth, imposing civil penalties on any doctors who provide such care.
Trans rights advocates sued, arguing that the law bans best-practice medical care for trans youth, care that has safely been provided to cisgender minors for decades without government interference.
“It was incredibly painful watching my child struggle before we were able to get her the life-saving healthcare she needed. We have a confident, happy daughter now, who is free to be herself and she is thriving,” said plaintiff Samantha Williams. “I am so afraid of what this law will mean for her. We don’t want to leave Tennessee, but this legislation would force us to either routinely leave our state to get our daughter the medical care she desperately needs or to uproot our entire lives and leave Tennessee altogether. No family should have to make this kind of choice.”
The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. The defendants are Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and his staff.
