A federal appeals court has vacated a lower court’s block on a Tennessee law forbidding kids from essentially being sexually mutilated.
“The 2-1 ruling from the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower district court’s injunction that paused the Tennessee law,” The Washington Post reported on Saturday, the day the ruling was issued.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that this positive ruling is only temporary, as the Sixth Circuit reportedly still has to conduct a full review of the case.
The full review isn’t expected to be completed until Sept. 30th.
“The case is far from over, but this is a big win. The court of appeals lifted the injunction, meaning the law can be fully enforced, and recognized that Tennessee is likely to win the constitutional argument and the case,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, said in a statement.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti issued this statement after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Tennessee’s emergency motion for a stay of the preliminary injunction in L.W. v. Skrmetti. pic.twitter.com/MFNrGrQ9Zv
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) July 8, 2023
As previously reported, the law prohibits medical providers from offering so-called “gender-affirming care” (puberty blockers, genital removal, etc.) to children who think they’re transgender.
It was passed on the basis that children are too young to understand sex and gender, let alone to have their genitals surgically removed/altered. But not long after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law in March, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit.
The ACLU specifically filed suit on behalf of Samantha and Brian Williams, in addition to their 15-year-old daughter and two other anonymous plaintiff families.
“It was incredibly painful watching my child struggle before we were able to get her the life-saving healthcare she needed. We have a confident, happy daughter now, who is free to be herself and she is thriving. I am so afraid of what this law will mean for her,” Samantha Williams said in a statement at the time.
“We don’t want to leave Tennessee, but this legislation would force us to either routinely leave our state to get our daughter the medical care she desperately needs, or to uproot our entire lives and leave Tennessee altogether. No family should have to make this kind of choice,” she added.
“I don’t even want to think about having to go back to the dark place I was in before I was able to come out and access the care that my doctors have prescribed for me,” the unnamed daughter likewise said.
“I want this law to be struck down so that I can continue to receive the care I need, in conversation with my parents and my doctors, and have the freedom to live my life and do the things I enjoy,” she added.
Months later in late June, “a district court judge in Tennessee found that the state’s new law banning transgender therapies like hormone blockers and surgeries for transgender youth was unconstitutional because it discriminated on the basis of sex,” according to ABC News.
Returning to the present, Nashville public radio station WPLN notes that the Sixth Circuit cited Dobbs v. Jackson — the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade — nine times in its decision made Saturday.
The court argued that Tennessee’s law “likely does not discriminate on the basis of sex because ‘the regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny,'” according to WPLN.
“The opinion also posits that the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that gender-affirming care is ‘deeply rooted in our history and traditions,'” WPLN further notes.
Update: The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allows for Tennessee’s prohibition on sex changes for minors to take effect. pic.twitter.com/n8u7vvYcFu
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) July 8, 2023
As pointed out earlier, the decision was 2-1, so there was one dissenter: Judge Helene White.
In her dissenting opinion, she argued “that the law likely does discriminate based on sex, since it allows hormone therapy for cisgender and intersex kids, but not for transgender kids,” according to WPLN.
She also noted that “until today, every federal court addressing similar laws reached the same conclusion.”
She was right, in the sense that the Sixth Circuit’s ruling marks “the first instance of a federal court allowing a ban of this kind to proceed after similar laws were blocked in other states,” the Post notes.
She also reportedly argued that many members of the medical community support the plaintiffs’ argument that so-called “gender-affirming care” should be argued.
The other two judges pushed back on this argument by noting that their support is ultimately irrelevant.
“That many members of the medical community support the plaintiffs is surely relevant. But it is not dispositive for the same reason we would not defer to a consensus among economists about the proper incentives for interpreting the impairment-of-contracts or takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution,” they wrote in their majority opinion.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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