Sixth Circuit Decision Upholding Ban on Gender Affirming Care for Minors is a Monumental LGBTQ Rights Case Headed to SCOTUS

A Monumental LGBTQ Rights Case is Barreling Toward the Supreme Court

In recent months, Republican lawmakers in many states enacted laws targeting LGBTQ Americans, attempting to shut down their right to free expression and even deny them medical care, among other things. Until Saturday, however, civil rights lawyers challenging these laws fared surprisingly well in federal court, convincing even many Republican judges.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s decision in L.W. v. Skrmetti, threatens to upend all of that. Before L.W. was handed down this past weekend, there was a consensus among federal courts that the Constitution prohibits states from banning gender-affirming medical care.

L.W. destroys that consensus. It reinstated a Tennessee law, previously blocked by a federal trial court, that prohibits gender-affirming care for transgender patients under the age of 18. And the Sixth Circuit’s opinion was written by Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a widely respected judge, especially among the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority.

Sutton, a George W. Bush appointee, is one of the federal judiciary’s leading “feeder” judges, meaning that his law clerks are frequently hired to clerk for the Supreme Court justices — a sign that the justices are likely to pay careful attention to Sutton’s views when deciding how to resolve a case like L.W.