When the Supreme Court hears the appeal from transgender youths challenging a Tennessee ban on their medical care, fundamental principles forbidding sex discrimination will be on the line. The justices’ view of whether landmark decisions tracing back a half-century apply to transgender rights will affect more than the access of young people to puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
At the case’s core is the crucial question of how much judicial scrutiny laws regarding transgender individuals demand. The legal standards invoked by black-robed jurists may seem dry and arcane. But in a case testing the reach of the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee, those standards set the terms of the debate and determine which side has the greater burden to prove its case.
