SCOTUS shields Kentucky ban on transgender care for minors in ruling on TN law
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled Wednesday to uphold a state ban on certain gender transition treatments for minors, strengthening the legality of Kentucky’s own ban passed in 2023.
The high court’s six conservative justices upheld a Tennessee ban that prevents doctors from prescribing hormones and puberty blockers for gender transition.
The Republican-led Kentucky state legislature passed a similar law — Senate Bill 150 — in 2023. A legal challenge to Kentucky’s ban, initially brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of seven unnamed trans teenagers and their families, was consolidated with Tennessee’s lawsuit last year before it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
Both suits argued the states’ respective bans violated the trans adolescents’ equal protection rights, because they discriminate against them based on sex and their status as trans people, as well as the due process rights of the parents to direct the medical treatment of their children.
Like Tennessee’s, Kentucky’s ban prohibits health care providers from prescribing, dispensing or administering puberty blockers and hormone treatments to trans adolescents if the purpose is to affirm their trans identity. The law also blocks doctors from performing gender-transition surgeries on anyone under age 18. Kentucky’s lawsuit challenged the loss of access to medication, not surgeries.
This ruling means Kentucky’s ban can remain in effect.
That was celebrated by Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman Wednesday, who said, “As parents and public officials, we have a responsibility to protect our children from harm. That’s exactly what Kentucky’s General Assembly did with the passage of Senate Bill 150, creating a commonsense measure to safeguard minors from life-altering medical procedures.
“Our Office has fulfilled its duty to defend statutes passed by the General Assembly. Along with our colleague, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, and other attorneys general across the country, we have finally upheld the law that will protect our young people from irreparable damage.”
But Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, called it a “painful setback.”
“The Supreme Court has failed to protect families’ freedoms and allowed politicians to target transgender youth. This is a painful setback, and it is clear the court will not protect these children,” Shapiro said.
“But it will not stop us from using all available legal tools to fight back against the political extremists targeting transgender people’s safety and dignity. What’s important to remember is that no matter what the court or politicians say, transgender young people and their families are not alone in this fight.”
For many trans kids in the commonwealth who have the resources, the two-year-old ban has forced them to drive out of state to get gender-affirming medication.
That’s what one of the Kentucky plaintiffs, who is 16, and his family have had to do for the last year — travel to Virginia to get a prescription for testosterone.
Learning of the Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday, his mother, whose identity is being withheld because she and her son joined Kentucky’s lawsuits under pseudonyms, told the Herald-Leader: “For us, personally, we have figured things out. We’re OK. The thing that’s breaking my heart is the families who don’t have the same resources that we have, or can’t afford to go to another state for care.
“I think my kid is safe, but there are so many out there that aren’t going to be, that won’t have the ability or resources to figure this out. This will cost lives,” she said.
LGBT allies decry ruling, conservatives praise it
Kentucky’s ban, before it was law, received significant pushback from the state’s LGBTQ+ community, sparking protests that resulted in the arrests of several people at the state Capitol. It became law over Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto in March 2023.
More than 25 states with Republican-controlled legislatures have passed laws banning transgender youth from accessing this type of health care. Nearly all of those laws were passed in the last five years, and more than half are facing legal challenges.
Three juveniles and their families in Tennessee challenged their state’s ban around the same time the American Civil Liberties Union challenged Kentucky’s.
Lower courts granted requests from plaintiffs in both states — three families in Tennessee and six families in Kentucky — temporarily blocking both bans from enforcement.
Republican attorneys generals in both states then appealed, bringing both cases before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel on that appellate court consolidated the cases before undoing lower court decisions in both cases, once again allowing the laws to be enforced.
Last November, Kentucky and Tennessee plaintiffs appealed to the nation’s highest court for relief. In April, then-President Joe Biden’s administration, as an intervenor, asked for Tennessee’s case, specifically, to be reviewed and reversed.
The high court heard oral arguments in the Tennessee case in December. In their June 18 ruling, they disagreed with the argument that Tennessee’s ban violates a trans adolescent’s Equal Protection rights or parents’ Due Process rights.
In its 118-page decision, the majority found Tennessee’s law — and by extension, Kentucky’s — “does not exclude any individual from medical treatments on the basis of transgender status,” nor does it violate equal protection principles.
“The court’s role is not ‘to judge the wisdom, fairness or logic’ of (Tennessee’s ban), but only to ensure that the law does not violate equal protection guarantees. It does not,” the majority wrote in the 118-page ruling.
Republican Senate Majority Leader Max Wise, lead sponsor of the ban in bill form, praised the ruling.
“The court’s ruling affirms what most Kentuckians believe — that parents matter, science matters, and our kids deserve their childhood and innocence,” Wise said in a statement. “I’m proud of Kentucky’s leadership, grateful to Attorney General Russell Coleman for defending the law, and thankful that our nation’s highest court recognized the legitimate and compelling interests at stake. Common sense has triumphed.”
David Walls, executive director of the Family Foundation, one of the leading Christian conservative lobbying groups in Kentucky that lobbied hard for passage of Kentucky’s ban, also celebrated the high court’s ruling and undermined the validity of trans individuals’ identities.
“For all of human history, the truth that the human person is objectively and profoundly male or female has been the cornerstone of all civilizations. It is not possible for an individual to change his gender, and thankfully kids can be protected from harmful experiments that attempt to do the impossible,” Family Foundation Executive Director David Walls wrote.
“This ruling will ensure that laws protecting children from permanent chemical and physical mutilation in Kentucky and at least 24 other states remain fully in effect.”
But to LGBTQ+ allies, the ruling portends a bleak future that cements the denial of medical care to an already marginalized and vulnerable group.
Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman said the court ruled “in favor of discrimination and against best practice medical care for transgender youth.”
“In this unconscionable and unacceptable move by the high court, countless transgender kids will continue to be denied life-saving medications and medical care prescribed by their doctors in states like Kentucky and Tennessee... Shame on the Supreme Court and state lawmakers, who work to keep transgender kids in their crosshairs for nothing more than political gain,” Hartman wrote.
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilwoman Emma Curtis, who is trans, said the SCOTUS ruling “reaffirms what we already knew: That the courts extremist conservative majority would choose to deny life-saving health care to our most vulnerable children.
“My heart breaks for those kids and their families, but I want to remind them and anyone else who’s paying attention that a world without trans people has never existed and never will,” she said. “We will keep fighting, we will weather this storm together and eventually we will person.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 10:52 AM.
