A setback for trans young people
6 to 3 against trans young people: in 2025, the Supreme Court paved the way for bans in more than 25 US states.
On 18 June 2025, the US Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that hit trans minors like hardly any other in recent history.
By six votes to three, in the case United States v. Skrmetti, the justices upheld a Tennessee law that prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to trans minors. The case had originally been brought by the Biden administration, which considered the law a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. Writing for the conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law did not discriminate on the basis of sex but merely regulated age and medical use. A minimal rational basis standard was therefore sufficient, which Tennessee easily met.
The dissenting votes came from the three liberal justices. Sonia Sotomayor, unusually, read her dissent aloud in the courtroom and declared that the ruling would inflict untold harm on trans children and their families. She omitted the traditional word "respectfully" before "I dissent".
The ruling had an immediate effect far beyond Tennessee: at the time of the decision, 27 US states had passed similar bans. The Skrmetti ruling meant that these laws would very likely also stand. For tens of thousands of trans young people and their families, this had real consequences: treatments recognised as standard by leading professional bodies became effectively inaccessible in more than half of the United States.
In the middle of Pride Month, a hopeful era in the fight for trans rights came to an end.