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Supreme Court agrees to review Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors
Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider whether a Tennessee law that ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors violates the Constitution, setting the stage for a major decision on transgender rights in its next term.
The justices agreed to review lower court decisions upholding Tennessee’s ban, which was appealed by the Justice Department and transgender youth who argue that the laws are outside the bounds of the 14th Amendment.
The case will be argued in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October, with a decision likely by the end of June 2025. The dispute thrusts the Supreme Court into the center of a politically fraught issue that has sparked a wave of legislative action by state Republican lawmakers.
The outcome of the case could have a nationwide impact, since more than 20 states have in recent years enacted laws restricting treatments like puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy or surgeries for transgender minors.
The Supreme Court has never weighed in directly on the constitutionality of these bans, and the justices intervened in one case involving an Idaho law on an emergency basis. In April, the court agreed to let Idaho officials enforce the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for nearly all transgender minors statewide and narrowed the scope of a lower court’s order that blocked the law from taking effect.
Under the Supreme Court’s order, Idaho’s law did not apply to two transgender teenagers who challenged the restrictions.
In a separate case involving a West Virginia law that bans transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams, the Supreme Court declined to allow state officials to enforce the law while legal proceedings continue.
The Tennessee law
The Tennessee law, known as SB1 and enacted in March 2023, prohibits health care providers from “prescribing, administering or dispensing any puberty blocker or hormone” if the treatment is to “enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
While the law also bars surgical procedures undertaken for the same purpose, that restriction is not at issue in the case. Puberty blockers or hormones can be administered to treat conditions like precocious puberty, disease, a congenital defect or physical injuries.
Violators of Tennessee’s law can face civil penalties of $25,000, professional discipline and potential civil liability. While the law took effect on July 1, 2023, it allowed banned treatments that started before then to continue until March 31.
One transgender girl and two transgender boys, who were all diagnosed with gender dysphoria, challenged the ban along with a doctor in the state who works with transgender patients, arguing in part that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Justice Department intervened in the case.
A federal district court blocked state officials from enforcing the law, finding it likely was unconstitutional. The ban, the court said, “expressly and exclusively targets transgender people,” and found that the “benefits of the medical procedures banned by [the law] are well-established.”
But a divided panel a judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed the injunction. The Justice Department and transgender teenagers appealed to the Supreme Court.
In a filing with the justices, the Biden administration noted the flurry of legislative activity in nearly half of the states that has prohibited transgender teenagers from receiving medical care “in accordance with evidence-based standards reflecting the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.”
“Absent this court’s review, families in Tennessee and other states where laws like SB1 have taken effect will face the loss of essential medical care,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote. “Those with the resources to do so may abandon their homes, jobs, schools, and communities to move to a State where the needed treatment remains available. Others will not have even that option.”
Represented by the ACLU, the transgender adolescents and their families noted that courts of appeals are divided over the constitutionality of laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents, as well as the appropriate level of scrutiny to apply to bans targeting transgender individuals for medical treatment.
“The legal uncertainty surrounding this medical care is creating chaos across the country for adolescents, families and doctors,” their lawyers told the Supreme Court in a filing.
But lawyers for the state of Tennessee said that hormonal and surgical interventions for minors who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria “carry serious and potentially irreversible side effects.” They argued the gender-affirming care ban seeks to ensure young Tennesseans don’t receive these treatments “until they can fully understand the lifelong consequences or until the science is developed to the point that Tennessee might take a different view of their efficacy.”
The state argued that the question of whether Tennessee can enact regulations on medical interventions for minors is one of public policy and should be left to voters’ elected representatives.
“Tennessee acted rationally, reasonably, and compassionately to protect its children, and the Act survives any level of review,” lawyers for the state wrote in a brief. “Nothing in the Constitution deputizes petitioners to override the legislature’s judgment and demand a policy they believe to be more favorable.”
The escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continued Saturday as both sides traded strikes as the war in Gaza nears one year.
The Israel Defense Forces said its air force struck Hezbollah fighters inside a mosque in southern Lebanon that they said was used as a command center to “plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”
The mosque was adjacent to Salah Ghandour Hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil. The hospital said in a statement that Israeli forces had shelled it after being warned to evacuate. The shelling “resulted in nine members of the medical and nursing staff being injured, most of them seriously,” while most of the medical staff were evacuated. On Thursday, the World Health Organization said 28 health workers in Lebanon had been killed in the past 24 hours.
ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images
At the same time, 12 Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, including one that badly damaged a large hall Hezbollah used to hold ceremonies, Lebanon’s state news agency said.
Later in the day, more strikes hit the area, from which tens of thousands of people have fled over the past two weeks.
Israeli airstrikes also hit areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to state media. At least six people were killed, according to NNA.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it launched a series of rockets at an Israeli air base near Haifa, about 30 miles from the Lebanese border. Israeli police said fragments of interceptors fell in several sites but no injuries were reported, according to the Associated Press.
Israel has sharply expanded its strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with the Iran-backed Hezbollah — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations. The IDF has been carrying out nightly bombardment of Beirut’s once densely populated southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah. Overnight, a military spokesman issued three alerts for residents there to evacuate.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images
Nearly a week of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon, near Israel’s northern border, and two weeks of airstrikes in that region and in southern Beirut — both Hezbollah strongholds — had killed more than 2,000 people, the health ministry said. More than 1 million people have been driven from their homes, including tens of thousands under Israel evacuation orders in almost 100 towns and villages near the border.
Hezbollah started launching those attacks in support of its ideological ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, the day after Hamas sparked the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The IDF says Hezbollah militants have fired over 10,000 rockets across the border since Oct. 8, 2023. The vast majority of them have been intercepted by Israel’s advanced missile defense systems.
Israel conducts more ground raids
The Israeli military said on Saturday its special forces were carrying out ground raids against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon, destroying missiles, launchpads, watchtowers and weapons storage facilities. The military said troops also dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.
Some 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries’ shared border. On Tuesday, Israel launched what it calls a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon.
Nine Israeli troops have been killed in close fighting in the area in the past few days, which is saturated with arms and explosives, the military said.
Americans attempt to leave Lebanon
The U.S. government has warned Americans not to travel to Lebanon since mid-September and urged any citizens in the country to leave via commercial travel routes. As of Friday night, the U.S. State Department has assisted approximately 500 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on flights organized by the agency.
Other nations are also working to evacuate their residents from Lebanon. Germany has evacuated 460 citizens on German military flights, while a Dutch military transport plane carried more than 100 citizens out of Lebanon. There were also citizens of Belgium, Finland and Ireland who were repatriated on that flight.
ROB ENGELAAR/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s great that these people are safely back in the Netherlands. These have been tense times for them,” Christiaan Rebergen, secretary-general of the foreign ministry, said after they landed Friday.
Fighting ongoing in Gaza
Palestinian medical officials say Israeli strikes in northern and central Gaza early Saturday have killed at least nine people, including two children.
One strike hit a group of people in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, killing at least five people, including two children, according to the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service.
Another strike hit a house in the northern part of Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least four people, the Awda hospital said. The strike also left a number of wounded people, it said.
The Israeli military did not have any immediate comment on the strikes but has long accused Hamas of operating from within civilian areas.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military had warned residents in parts of central Gaza to evacuate, saying its forces would soon operate there in response to Palestinian militants.
The warnings cover areas along a strategic corridor in central Gaza, which was at the heart of obstacles to a ceasefire deal earlier this summer. The military warned Palestinians in areas of Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, located along the Netzarim corridor, to evacuate to an along Gaza’s shore called Muwasi, which the military has designated a humanitarian zone. It’s unclear how many Palestinians are currently living in the areas affected by the order, parts of which were evacuated previously.
Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the almost year-long war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
CBS News
1-month-old twins who died with mother believed to be the youngest-known Hurricane Helene victims
Month-old twin boys are believed to be the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The boys died alongside their mother last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, grandfather of the twins, said he could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he spoke with his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm tore through Georgia.
The single mother had been sitting in bed holding sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatting on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
AP
Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, was staying with her daughter, helping her take care of the babies. She was on the other side of the trailer home when she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried out in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed more than 200 lives across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is in shock and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ home city of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree branches blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The debris left him trapped in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little over a day after the storm barreled through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some have sought refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their father and mourn together, he said.
He described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved to make people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everybody loved her.”
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