Schumer rips Supreme Court decision upholding state ban on transgender treatments for minors: 'Awful'

Fox News

5 hours ago

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday to uphold Tennessee's ban on transgender "treatments" for minors.
"This Supreme Court seems to have forgotten that one of their jobs is to protect individual rights and protect individuals from being discriminated against. It's an awful decision," Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Schumer accused Republicans of trying to infringe on the rights of transgender youths.
"On the floor, we had a bill, that the Republicans wanted to take away these rights," Schumer said. "And we got, I believe, every Democrat voting against it. So it failed because it needed 60 votes. So we're going to explore every solution."
Schumer further condemned the Court's 6-3 decision online.
"Republicans' cruel crusade against trans kids is all an attempt to divert attention from ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans," Schumer wrote. "We'll keep fighting, and we'll keep marching on."
The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), meanwhile, said the majority's decision "helps restore sanity for millions of families across America."
"Boys are boys and girls are girls," RAGA President and Executive Director Adam Piper said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "While Republican AGs crusade against risky, irreversible gender transition procedures for minors, Dem pander to their extreme donors and slouch towards Gomorrah. We must continue to protect our daughters from men trying to invade their single-sex spaces, privacy and athletic competitions."
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti – whose office handled the defense in the case – praised the decision, saying that "the common sense of Tennessee voters prevailed over judicial activism."
"The rapid and unexplained rise in the number of kids seeking these life-altering interventions, despite the lack of supporting evidence, calls for careful scrutiny from our elected leaders," he said in a statement. "This victory transcends politics. It's about real Tennessee kids facing real struggles. Families across our state and our nation deserve solutions based on science, not ideology. Today's landmark decision recognizes that the Constitution lets us fulfill society's highest calling – protecting our kids."
The case centered on Tennessee state law SB1, which restricts sex transition treatments for minors for the treatment of gender dysphoria.
The Tennessee legislature's findings, as detailed in the statute, included that such treatments "can lead to the minor becoming irreversibly sterile, having an increased risk of disease and illness, or suffering from adverse and sometimes fatal psychological consequences." The Republican-controlled state body also noted that minors "lack the maturity to fully understand and appreciate" these consequences and may later regret undergoing the treatments and want to de-transition.
Writing for the conservative majority, Justice John Roberts noted that the case from Tennessee "carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field."
"The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound," he wrote. "The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.
The conservative justices ruled that SB1 is not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They said the law incorporates two classifications – on the basis of age and the basis of medical use.
"Healthcare providers may administer certain medical treatments to individuals ages 18 and older but not to minors," Roberts wrote. "Healthcare providers may administer puberty blockers or hormones to minors to treat certain conditions but not to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence. Classifications that turn on age or medical use are subject to only rational basis review."
The decision says neither of those classifications turns on sex. Rather, SB1 "prohibits healthcare providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones to minors for certain medical uses, regardless of a minor's sex."
All three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor arguing that the majority "abandons transgender children and their families to political whims."