The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld laws in states that ban gender affirming medical care for transgender minors. The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines.
Now Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is calling on state legislators to pass a similar law in Arizona.
Horne is no stranger to legal battles over transgender issues. In 2023, he defended a state law that bans athletes assigned male at birth from playing on girls' school sports teams.
Horne said it’s time for Arizona to ban gender affirming care for minors, pointing to court documents that list concerns over the safety and long-term effects of administering puberty blockers and hormones.
"In upholding the Tennessee law, the United States Supreme Court stated that such treatments ‘can lead to the minor becoming irreversibly sterile, having increased risk of disease and illness, or suffering from adverse and sometimes fatal psychological consequences.’ The Court also stated that ‘minors lack the maturity to fully understand and appreciate these consequences,’" Horne said.
Proponents of gender affirming care for trans youths point to studies that show reductions in depression and improvements in mental well-being.
Data from The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that two-thirds of transgender and nonbinary youth reported experiencing symptoms of depression, more than half seriously considered suicide, and nearly 1 in 5 attempted suicide.
The case was brought by transgender children and their parents in Tennessee who claimed that the state's ban on hormone treatments and puberty blockers for transgender minors discriminated on the basis of sex. They contended that they were being denied equal protection of the law because the same medications that are banned for minors with gender dysphoria are permitted for other minors with conditions such as endometriosis and early or late onset puberty.
But writing for the conservative court's supermajority, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that argument entirely.
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