In the US, supposed to be the “Land of the Free”, the rightwing-leaning Supreme Court allowed for the state of Idaho to proceed with the enforcement of a new law that prohibits providing life-saving gender-affirming care for minors.
This decision – which overrides the decision of two lower federal courts to uphold an injunction against the law while it is being litigated – was backed by all six of the high court’s conservative members.
In a statement, one of the conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch, wrote that “injunctions… may go no further than necessary to provide interim relief to the parties. In this case, however, the district court went much further, prohibiting a state from enforcing any aspect of its duly enacted law against anyone.”
Liberal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing that the high court should have refrained from intervening in a high-profile case like this at an early stage, which disrupted “the legal status quo.” “In my view, we should resist being conscripted into service when our involvement amounts to micromanaging the lower courts’ exercise of their discretionary authority in the midst of active litigation.”
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Idaho called the ruling an “awful result.” “While the court’s ruling today importantly does not touch upon the constitutionality of this law, it is nonetheless an awful result for transgender youth and their families across the state… Today’s ruling allows the state to shut down the care that thousands of families rely on while sowing further confusion and disruption. Nonetheless, today’s result only leaves us all the more determined to defeat this law in the courts entirely, making Idaho a safer state to raise every family.”
It is worth stressing that while conservative politicians may be against providing gender-affirming care for LGBTQIA people, including minors, with conservative-leaning courts backing them, medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, beneficial and medically necessary. These include the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
