In an important victory for children and parents, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18 voted 6-3 to uphold Tennessee’s common-sense SAFE Act, SB1 (Save Adolescents from Experimentation), which protects minors under age 18 from undergoing gender transition procedures, including puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. This ruling supports a lower court decision that SB1 does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was the primary complaint. (See Education Reporter, December 2024.)

A CBS News report on MSN.com lamented that the decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti — the Biden Administration’s challenge to the Tennessee law — “restricts gender affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria,” which “is likely to have broad implications in half of the country.”

As an example, Oklahoma City’s hoodline.com called the high court’s ruling “a precedent for other states,” including Oklahoma, where a similar bill (SB 613) “saw a robust pass in the legislature and was subsequently greenlit by the federal district court.” The state is now awaiting a decision from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a press release issued June 19, Oklahoma Senate Majority Leader Julie Daniels (R-Bartlesville) applauded the SCOTUS decision, stating:

• The court said the state has a legitimate, substantial and compelling interest in protecting minor children from physical and emotional harm. Our law protects children and families from making these life-changing, irreversible decisions until a child turns 18. They must be mature enough to understand the risks and long-term effects of gender transition procedures.

Supreme Court opinions

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court upholding the Tennessee law, and was joined by justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Alito.

In ruling that the law does not violate the 14th Amendment, Roberts acknowledged the controversial “scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field,” noting that “the voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.”

Justice Thomas called into question the ethics of the common gender transition procedures. He wrote:

• Setting aside whether sex-transition treatments for children are effective, States may legitimately question whether they are ethical. States have a legitimate interest “in protecting the integrity and ethics of the medical profession.” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 731 (1997).... Mounting evidence gives States reason to question whether children are capable of providing informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, and thus whether these treatments can be ethically administered.

Justice Barrett asserted that legislatures rather than courts should make policy judgments involving medical conditions such as gender dysphoria, while Alito, writing his own opinion in support of the final ruling, only concurred with brief sections of the majority opinion.

Justice Alito wrote: “The legislature concluded that the prohibited medical procedures were ‘experimental in nature and not supported by high-quality, long-term medical studies,’ and that often ‘a minor’s discordance can be resolved by less invasive approaches that are likely to result in better outcomes.’” §§68-33-101(b), (c). He asserted that Tennessee’s findings are “consistent with those made by other respected bodies that cannot be charged with hostility to minors experiencing gender dysphoria or to transgender people in general.”

The dissenting justices predictably claimed the Tennessee law “discriminates against transgender adolescents....” According to CBS News, Sotomayor “accused the majority of ‘retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most’ and abandoning ‘transgender children and their families to political whims.’”

Takeaways on ruling

Applauding the Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti, an article in The Washington Stand called the decision “a win for children, common sense, and constitutional integrity.” Author Joshua Arnold observed that the court “chose not to force left-wing gender ideology down the throats of states whose legislatures chose to reject it.” He noted that the opinion carefully describes Americans who “identify as transgender,” as persons whose “gender identity does not align with their biological sex.”

Arnold lauded the court for “refusing to acknowledge sex-based categories as relevant to Tennessee’s law,” such as “sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex stereotyping.” The opinion states that, first of all, “SB1 classifies on the basis of age. ... Second, SB1 classifies on the basis of medical use ...” neither of which classification turns on sex.

The Stand pointed out that court decisions are inevitably influenced by culture, and that, as such, the high-court justices “are well aware of multiple [relevant] newsworthy developments.” The justices, for example, “highlighted the eroding credibility of WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health), the European walk-back of gender transition procedures for minors, and especially the Cass report, which caused England’s National Health Service (NHS) to totally redraw its model of care for gender dysphoric youth.” (See Education Reporter, November 2022, November 2024, and December 2024 for more information on these topics.)

More good news

In another positive development in the struggle against transgender madness, LifeSite News reported on June 4 that the FBI asked American citizens “to report anything they know about medical professionals who continue to perform life-altering gender ‘transition’ procedures on confused children.”

The FBI posted the appeal on its “official X account” on June 2. LifeSite explained that while more than half of the states have laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures, “there is no federal ban in place that the federal government could enforce,” so it’s unclear how much weight the FBI request will carry. However, it sends a message that reinforces President Trump’s January Executive Order declaring that the federal government “will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” the medical “transitioning” of gender-confused minors, “and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” the practice.

The FBI is asking citizens to provide tips about “‘any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners performing these surgical procedures on children by phone at 1-800-CALL-FBI,’ or to submit them [via] the official Electronic Tip Form at tips.fbi.gov.”

LifeSite wrote that the mostly ignored individuals who detransition, “attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that ‘transitioning’ is the best solution.”

Worthy of note here is the fact that gender transition surgeries “make a lot of money,” as “gender affirming” physicians have been caught admitting on video in the past.

Social media truth

Occasionally, interesting observations surface in the vast ocean of postings on social media. For example, an Instagram post suggested that the transgender movement may have begun as the result of a need for a “new revenue stream.” The post’s author speculated that, after the LGB war had largely been won, “the T” added a whole new dimension to victim-based ideology and opened up a wealth of new fundraising opportunities.

A Monty Python YouTube video from the “Life of Brian” posted on Substack similarly cuts to the chase, albeit using the group’s signature comedic format. The skit features one of the characters, Stan, asking the group to call him “Loretta” because he wants to be a woman. When asked why he wants to be a woman, he responds “because I want to have babies.”

His cronies scoff that men can’t have babies, to which Stan maintains “it’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” Another character replies that he can’t have babies because he doesn’t have a womb.

Judith, the lone female player, responds with “I have an idea. Suppose you agree he can’t have babies because he doesn’t have a womb. But he does have the right to have babies.”

“What’s the point of having the right to have babies when he can’t have babies?” asks the common-sense character.

“It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression,” another asserts. Mr. Common Sense then tells the group: “It’s symbolic of [Stan’s] struggle against reality.”

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