US Supreme Court upholds Tennessee on gender affirming care for minors
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors in a stunning setback to transgender rights.
The justices' 6-3 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump's Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to Tennessee's.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the law does not violate the Constitution's equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.
'This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,' Roberts wrote.
'The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.'
In a dissent for the court's three liberal justices that she summarised aloud in the courtroom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, 'By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.'
The decision comes amid a range of other federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.
In April, Trump's administration sued Maine for not complying with the government's push to ban transgender athletes in girls' sports.
The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 — instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people.
In addition, the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court fights continue. The president also signed another order to define the sexes as only male and female.
The president of the American Academy of Paediatrics, Dr. Susan Kressly, said in a statement the organisation is 'unwavering' in its support of gender-affirming care and 'stands with paediatricians and families making health care decisions together and free from political interference.'
Kressly said the Supreme Court's decision 'sets a dangerous precedent for legislative interference in the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship.'
The justices acted a month after the United Kingdom's top court delivered a setback to transgender rights, ruling unanimously that the Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some groups and single-sex spaces, like changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas and medical or counselling services provided only to women.
Five years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. That decision remains unaffected by Wednesday's ruling.
Emergency workers recovered more bodies on Wednesday from the rubble of a nine-story Kyiv apartment building destroyed by a Russian missile, bringing the death toll from the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital to 28.
The building in Kyiv's Solomianskyi district took a direct hit and collapsed in what was the deadliest Russian attack on the city this year. Authorities said that 23 of those killed were inside.
While sniffer dogs searched for buried victims, rescuers used cranes, excavators and even their hands to clear debris from the site.
The attack overnight on Monday into Tuesday was part of a sweeping barrage as Russia once again sought to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences. More than 440 drones and 32 missiles were launched - one of the biggest bombardments on the capital since the war began in 2022.
Russia has launched a summer offensive along parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre frontline and has intensified long-range attacks that have struck urban residential areas.
At the same time, US-led peace efforts have failed to gain traction, while Middle East tensions and US trade tariffs are diverting global focus away from Ukraine's calls for greater diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) says that Russia poses a direct threat to the bloc through acts of sabotage and cyberattacks, while its massive military spending suggests Moscow also plans to use the armed forces elsewhere in the future.
'Russia is already a direct threat to the European Union....This is a long-term plan for a long-term aggression. You don't spend that much on military if you do not plan to use it,' Kallas told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, as she listed a series of Russian airspace violations, provocative military exercises, and attacks on energy grids, pipelines and undersea cables.
Kallas noted that Russia is already spending more on defence than the EU's 27 nations combined, and this year will invest more 'on defence than its own health care, education and social policy combined.'
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that Russia is producing as many weapons and ammunition in three months as the 32 allies together make in a year. He believes that Russia could be in a position to launch an attack on a NATO ally by the end of the decade.
Concern is mounting in Europe that Russia could try to test NATO's Article 5 security guarantee, the pledge that an attack on any one of the allies would be met with a collective response from all 32.
In 2021, NATO allies acknowledged that significant and cumulative cyberattacks might, in certain circumstances, also be considered an armed attack that could lead them to invoke Article 5, but so far no action has been taken.
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