On The Chopping Block.

Our human rights are up on the docket… seven people will decide our fate, will we have all the rights cis-gender people have or will we be second class citizens!

A GOP Supreme Court will now decide the fate of transgender Americans
The legal question in United States v. Skrmetti is whether the word “all” means “all.” There’s no guarantee that this Court will say that it does.
Vox
By Ian Millhiser
November 15, 2024

It’s hard to imagine a worse time for the Supreme Court to hear United States v. Skrmetti, arguably the most important trans rights case the justices have ever heard. Skrmetti asks whether discrimination against transgender people can violate the Constitution, a question the Court has never answered.

A decision against the trans plaintiffs in Skrmetti, moreover, could potentially upend the entire legal framework protecting Americans from gender discrimination of all kinds.

[…]

Still, at least two of the Court’s Republicans have shown unexpected sympathy toward LGBTQ litigants in the past. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), the Court ruled that a longstanding ban on sex discrimination in employment prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — declaring that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

This is a biggie! The case is about our right to access healthcare.

The Supreme Court Case on Trans Health Care, Explained.
The court will soon hear a landmark legal challenge brought by the ACLU against a ban on hormone therapies for transgender youth.
ACLU
By Gillian Branstetter
September 5, 2024

Since 2021, 24 states have banned hormone therapy for transgender youth with gender dysphoria. Leading medical experts and organizations — such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics — oppose these restrictions, which have already forced thousands of families across the country to travel to maintain access to medical care or watch their child suffer without it.

In July 2023, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected requests from families and medical providers to block laws in Tennessee and Kentucky banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. At the same time, the Court elected to combine the requests, linking plaintiffs like a Nashville-based couple and their transgender teenage daughter, and a medical provider who supports trans youth with families in Kentucky. Both states asked the United States Supreme Court to rule on whether these laws are unconstitutional.

But the case has ramification way beyond our healthcare!

When arguing against transgender people and their families, states with bans like Tennessee’s have relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s opinion Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to ban abortion. U.S. v. Skrmetti will be a major test of how far the court is willing to stretch Dobbs to allow states to ban other health care. The court’s ruling could serve as a stepping stone towards further limiting access to abortion, IVF, and birth control.

And remember… the next president will most likely appoint another Supreme Court justice!

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Update: 11/24 @ 1:30PM

The Advocate:

“Our legal challenge is limited to the provisions of Tennessee’s ban targeting hormone therapies — such as hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers — and does not implicate surgical care,” the ACLU explains on its website, as genital surgery is almost never performed on minors.

“Tennessee’s ban, like every other passed by politicians in recent years, specifically permits these same hormone medications when they are provided in a way that Tennessee considers ‘consistent’ with a person’s sex designated at birth,” the ACLU continues. “This means, for example, a doctor could prescribe estrogen to a cisgender teenage girl for any clinical diagnosis but could not do the same for a transgender girl diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”

"The ban violates the U.S. Constitution by denying the same treatments for transgender youth that are commonly provided to cisgender youth," Sasha Buchert, Lambda Legal’s Nonbinary and Transgender Rights Project director, said in a recent Q&A on the organization's website. "Decisions about medical care properly lie with families and their doctors, and politicians shouldn’t be inserting themselves in these personal and private discussions."

 "'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" Our lives is in the hands of seven judges!

Human rights should never be put to a test!