The Supreme Court ruled against transgender youth on Wednesday by upholding a ban that the Tennessee legislature passed into law.
Legal analysts were deeply disturbed by the justification using the Equal Protection Clause to decide United States v. Skrmetti on Wednesday.
The Nation's legal analyst, Elie Mystal, wrote his own paraphrase of the concurrence from Justice Samuel Alito: "The court says that Tennessee does not discriminate against trans kids. I think it does. But, the more important point is, I don't care that it does, and neither should you. F--- them kids, I say."
"All you liberals humping Amy Coney Barrett recently should check out her concurrence in this case, where she explains why transgender people are not a suspect class and are entitled to no heighten constitutional protections and can generally go f--- themselves," he added.
Ryan Cooper, managing editor at The American Prospect, called the ruling "the Plessy v. Ferguson for transgender people."
"They want everyone but straight cis people back in the closet or ideally dead," he added.
Georgia State University Law School Professor Anthony Michael Kris agreed with the sentiment, instead looking at another landmark case over race. "The reasoning in Skrmetti is just repackaged 'every race is punished equally, so nothing to see here' logic that Loving v. Virginia emphatically rejected."
Columbia Law School Professor Jamal Greene remarked, "I don't find Skrmetti an easy case. I am inclined to be very deferential to state regulation of medical procedures for minors. But to apply rational basis review here is, to my mind, an abdication of the Court's responsibility to the people harmed by this law. The message is clear: you don't count."
"Lurking under the surface of the 6–3 majority is a split over how to evaluate laws that indisputably discriminate against transgender people. Barrett, Thomas, and Alito say that anti-trans discrimination is not subject to heightened scrutiny. Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch don't say either way," wrote Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern on Bluesky.
"By SCOTUS's logic, a law banning all treatments for erectile dysfunction would not discriminate on the basis of sex so long as it was applied to everyone," plaintiffs' lawyer Max Kennerly commented.
Another person responded to him, saying, "Or banning all treatment for testicular cancer."
