Justice Sotomayor dissents US supreme court decision that ‘authorizes untold harm to transgender children’ – live | US supreme court

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision “does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight”.

This, she said, “authorizes … untold harm to transgender children”.

This case presents an easy question: whether SB1’s ban on certain medications, applicable only if used in a manner ‘inconsistent with … sex’, contains a sex classification. Because sex determines access to the covered medications, it clearly does. Yet the majority refuses to call a spade a spade. Instead, it obfuscates a sex classification that is plain on the face of this statute, all to avoid the mere possibility that a different court could strike down SB1, or categorical healthcare bans like it.

The Court’s willingness to do so here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.

She acknowledged her “sadness” and said the decision “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims”.

[T]he majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. 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.