(The Washington Stand. Joshua Arnold).
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the 2023 Tennessee law protecting minors from gender transition procedures. After a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a preliminary injunction against Tennessee’s law in September, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court has now agreed to hear the appeal in United States v. Skrmetti. “As a practical necessity, the Supreme Court needed to take up the case,” Family Action Council of Tennessee president David Fowler told The Washington Stand. The Supreme Court is more likely to consider a case on which the circuit courts are split — that is, where federal appellate courts have issued contradictory precedents over how to handle the constitutional questions at issue. Justice Neil Gorsuch recently noted “an apparent circuit split” on such laws. (Gorsuch noted this in a concurring opinion accompanying an unsigned order that granted Idaho an emergency stay, narrowing a preliminary injunction issued against its law protecting minors from gender transition procedures, in Labrador v. Poe.)