Justice Sonia Sotomayor slams gender-affirming care ruling as 'state-sanctioned discrimination'

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting, criticized her colleagues for abandoning transgender children and suggested the ruling encourages discrimination under the guise of legal classification. Joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, she argued that the law explicitly discriminates based on sex and gender, rendering transgender Americans more susceptible to state-sanctioned discrimination, thereby causing potential harm to the Equal Protection Clause's integrity.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn't mince her words when dissenting to the majority in U.S. v. Skrmetti, accusing her conservative colleagues of 'abandon[ing] transgender children and their families to political whims.'

In a scathing dissent, Sotomayor said the Court's decision will 'do irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invite legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight.'

By refusing to apply heightened scrutiny, the majority renders transgender Americans doubly vulnerable to state-sanctioned discrimination,' she wrote. 'In sadness, I dissent.'

Sotomayor argued that the Tennessee law explicitly discriminates on the basis of both sex and gender, as it 'expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status.'

Read at Advocate.com