Sotomayor warns Skrmetti decision will cause 'untold harm' to transgender children in scathing dissent
Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted six of her colleagues on the Supreme Court in a blistering dissent on Wednesday for deciding to uphold a Tennessee law banning specific transgender medical treatments for minors.
Sotomayor said the 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti, issued along ideological lines, improperly discriminated against minors based on their sex. The liberal justice made the atypical move to read her dissent from the bench.
Sotomayor, who was appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama, said the majority "refuses to call a spade a spade" and "obfuscates a sex classification" to allow the Tennessee bill to withstand constitutional tests.
Supreme Court Appears Divided Over State Bans On Gender Transition 'Treatments' For Minors
"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," Sotomayor said. "It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them."
The case, which was one of the most closely watched of the high court's term, arose from the Biden administration suing over a bill Tennessee passed in 2023 to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy as treatments for minors who identify as transgender.
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Scotus Rules On State Ban On Gender Transition 'Treatments' For Minors In Landmark Case
Sotomayor, whose dissent was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, said doctors would offer such medical treatments based on a patient having gender dysphoria. A law banning that practice requires a heightened level of scrutiny that the Supreme Court's majority recklessly did not apply, Sotomayor alleged.
"The majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review," Sotomayor wrote. "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."
The Supreme Court's decision effectively allows states who pass laws like Tennessee's to ban certain medical treatments for minors.Original article source: Sotomayor warns Skrmetti decision will cause 'untold harm' to transgender children in scathing dissent
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E&E News
27 minutes ago
- E&E News
Did Trump's assault on regs just knock out CCS?
The Trump administration is telling the world that carbon capture and storage at power plants is not ready for prime time, delivering a major setback to a technology that's struggling to find a foothold. EPA proposed a repeal last week of the Biden administration's climate rule on electricity producers, which called CCS the 'best system of emission reduction' for long-running coal plants and new gas turbines. In a new proposed rule, EPA said capturing 90 percent of carbon emissions at power plants hasn't been 'adequately demonstrated and its costs are not reasonable.' It's 'extremely unlikely that the infrastructure necessary for CCS can be deployed' by a 2032 compliance date set under the Biden rule, EPA said. Advertisement The Trump administration's proposed rollback — which EPA touted in a news release Friday with more than 50 supportive quotes from lawmakers and trade groups — comes amid scant deployment to date of carbon capture projects on U.S. power generation. Fewer projects in the electricity sector could impede broader CCS efforts nationwide, whether they involve storing carbon dioxide underground or using it to pump out more oil and gas. 'Power plants are large emitters, and sequestering CO2 from these facilities would have required significant investment in transport and storage infrastructure, most likely in the form of [carbon capture] hubs or clusters,' Brenna Casey, an associate at BloombergNEF, said in a recent note to clients. 'Other industrial emitters, like cement plants and petrochemicals producers, could have piggybacked on the infrastructure built to serve these power plants.' In a report last fall, the Global CCS Institute — a think tank that supports the industry — said 19 commercial-scale CCS facilities were operational in the United States. Only one, the Petra Nova facility in Texas, is on power generation, the assessment showed. 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In an analysis last June, the Rhodium Group research firm came to a similar conclusion, finding that fossil generation 'with carbon capture generally plays a small role on the grid in 2035.' While there's been 'limited' announcements of CCS for new gas-fired power generation so far, 'the impact to potential growth in this area would be the most significant as all new baseload gas generation would have been mandated to install CCS,' said Cooke at Rystad. 'Without regulation we should not expect near term growth in this area.' While the federal 45Q tax credit — the main incentive for CCS projects in the United States — has stayed relatively unharmed thus far in Congress' reconciliation package, high costs and difficulty building new pipelines to carry captured CO2 are also headwinds that have blunted deployment. The U.S. power sector is responsible for nearly a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — behind only the transportation sector. Last week, the Carbon Capture Coalition, a group that works to build federal policy support for carbon management projects, highlighted announced CCS plans in the U.S. power sector. 'Regardless of the administration's decision on how or if to regulate CO2 emissions from the power sector, carbon capture and storage technologies are here to stay,' said Jessie Stolark, the coalition's executive director, in a statement. Still, Stanford University professor Rob Jackson said companies won't pay for CCS when they can pollute for free. Jackson is a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, as well as its Precourt Institute for Energy. Last week, Alex Bond, executive director of legal and clean energy policy at the Edison Electric Institute, said the group supports CCS technology but 'appreciates EPA's acknowledgment that carbon capture and storage technologies are not yet viable for widespread deployment.' 'Electric companies need standards for natural gas facilities that are attainable to plan and permit new facilities, along with flexible regulatory approaches that help maintain dispatchable generation,' Bond said in a statement. In a statement Monday, an unnamed EPA spokesperson said the agency's regulatory agenda under Biden 'was to kill off the coal, oil and gas sectors with costly regulations and mandates.' The U.S. hit record oil and gas production levels during the Biden administration, however. DOE didn't provide comments to POLITICO's E&E News on the outlook for the CCS industry. The Global CCS Institute, however, said some customers will continue to look for low-carbon power, regardless of EPA's position, and will be interested in natural gas plants with CCS. 'Some states may also continue to promote policies that require or incentivize CCS, and the administration is prioritizing Class VI primacy, which will help states move forward where CCS is a priority,' the institute said in a statement. 'Strong market signal' On Earth Day this year, the White House used the term 'cutting-edge' to describe CCS. The emissions-trapping technology was on a list of sectors — including nuclear and geothermal energy — that the Trump administration said it supports in pursuit of greater energy production and 'environmental innovation.' The inclusion of CCS didn't go unnoticed among industry members or its proponents, including the developer of a major carbon dioxide pipeline project in the Midwest. Since that April proclamation, however, the administration's mashup of policies around carbon capture has elicited both praise and disappointment. One development cheered by CCS supporters has been EPA's push to grant top oversight of wells used for geologic storage of carbon dioxide to state agencies. This year, EPA has bestowed that authority to West Virginia and proposed doing the same for Arizona and Texas, clearing the path for those states to issue permits for CO2 storage wells instead of the federal government. The Department of Energy, meanwhile, has announced its intention to remove carbon management from its Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management; proposed cutting the office's budget by about $270 million; and said its work would include 'promoting carbon capture, transport and storage with a focus on enhanced oil and gas recovery,' where CO2 is used to produce more oil. In May, DOE terminated nearly $3.7 billion in awards — including several on carbon capture projects. Carbon management backers called the cancellations a 'major step backward' for national deployment. Then came EPA's proposed rule last week, which said greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants don't contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution. Although it's 'disappointing to see the [Trump] administration send mixed signals on its support for carbon management, the industry has proven that it's still 'all in', including through an unprecedented number of announced projects and pending Class VI wells,' said Stolark at the Carbon Capture Coalition in an email Friday. There's a 'strong market signal' for CCS deployment through the 45Q credit, as well as bipartisan support from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Stolark also said. Peter Findlay, director of carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) economics at research firm Wood Mackenzie, said the Trump administration's exact strategy on carbon capture isn't crystal clear. But he said it's one of three decarbonization target areas the administration backs, along with nuclear and geothermal. As far as CCS can help to foster energy independence, the Trump administration 'sees it as favorable, but not invest vast sums in the technology development,' Findlay said. While the United States remains a leader in operational CCS projects globally, Findlay said the potential is there for China to move past the U.S. if there's not sufficient federal support for early stage technologies. The Trump administration hasn't prioritized carbon capture in terms of its budget, said Ryan Fitzpatrick, senior director of domestic policy for the climate and energy program at Third Way, a national think tank and advocacy organization. 'I think a lot of the support that it's had and the protection that it's had in things like the reconciliation bill has come from Congress,' Fitzpatrick said. 'But I do think the administration is missing the bigger picture here, that whether it's the U.S. or other countries, CCS is going to be deployed and equipment is going to be purchased, technology is going to be licensed. 'There is money to be made, and the U.S. is currently well situated to compete for that, but that's not guaranteed,' he added. 'We have to have public support for this as well.' This week, the Senate Finance Committee's portion of the Republican reconciliation bill included some changes to the 45Q credit, including increasing the credit value for CO2 used in products or enhanced oil recovery. Promoting CCS tied to enhanced oil recovery fits into President Donald Trump's focus on expanding oil production, Fitzpatrick said. Still, he said, if CO2 storage via enhanced oil recovery is how Trump can support carbon capture, that's not the worst thing, as that will still prove beneficial for the sector overall. Project ups and downs Despite the fanfare, the only operational CCS facility at a U.S. power plant has less than six years combined under its belt. The Petra Nova project, which captures CO2 from a coal-fired unit at a power plant southwest of Houston, started operating around the beginning of 2017. While DOE put out a happy third birthday to the facility in January 2020, the CCS facility would soon shut down. Beginning that May, Petra Nova took a hiatus of more than three years after low oil prices, induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, hurt the project's economics. The Petra Nova facility, which has cumulatively captured 5 million metric tons of CO2 since it started up, is owned by ENEOS Xplora, formerly JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration. Meanwhile, at least one CCS project in the power sector is no longer moving ahead. Project Diamond Vault — a CCS retrofit of a Louisiana plant mainly fueled by petroleum coke announced in 2022 — is no more. 'In 2022, Cleco Power announced it would be initiating a two-year study to explore retrofitting the company's existing Madison 3 plant to reduce carbon emissions' through CCS, the power company said in a statement this week. In 2024, Cleco Power 'discontinued the study because it was found that the project wasn't economic and in the best interest of our customers.' But other projects are still working to join Petra Nova's ranks. Those include a CCS project at a California Resources (CRC) gas plant in California's Kern County, which announced plans to start construction in the second quarter of this year and begin CO2 injection before the end of 2025. The project was hit with a lawsuit in November over allegations that Kern County officials didn't properly weigh its environmental risks. On Monday, CRC spokesperson Richard Venn said construction of the CCS project is expected to begin in the next several weeks and will last roughly six months. That work includes well drilling, grading, trenching, foundations and installation of CO2 capture equipment, he said. 'CRC remains focused on advancing CCS as a critical tool for reducing emissions in California and supporting the state's ambitious climate goals,' Venn said in an email. Other proposals to tack on CCS technology are further out on the horizon. Developers of Project Tundra, which would add carbon capture to the coal-fired Milton R. Young Station in North Dakota, have declined to say when they could reach a final investment decision on the project. They failed to reach that milestone in 2024 and the project lost energy company TC Energy as one of its developers last year. 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'Project Tundra was initiated well before the current power plant regulations were finalized,' Fladhammer said, adding that the project 'remains an option under active evaluation as we assess technologies that can support reliable, lower-carbon energy production.' Meanwhile, a natural gas power plant in West Virginia with CCS — the CPV Shay Energy Center — 'remains in active development,' said Matthew Litchfield, vice president of external and regulatory affairs at Competitive Power Ventures, in a statement Friday. Announced in 2022 shortly after Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the plant would have a capacity of about 2,000 megawatts. It's in the process of working through the interconnection process with regional grid operator PJM Interconnection, according to Litchfield. Construction on the plant is slated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026. 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Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
U.S. Supreme Court upholds Tennessee prohibition on gender affirming care for minors
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in a case about Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for minors on Dec. 4, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by) The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's law prohibiting gender affirming care for minors, saying children who seek the treatment don't qualify as a protected class. In United States v. Skrmetti, the high court issued a 6-3 ruling Wednesday overturning a lower court's finding that the restrictions violate the constitutional rights of children seeking puberty blockers and hormones to treat gender dysphoria. The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the district court's decision and sent it to the high court. The court's three liberal justices dissented, writing that the court had abandoned transgender children and their families to 'political whims.' Tennessee lawmakers passed the legislation in 2023, leading to a lawsuit argued before the Supreme Court last December. The federal government, under the Biden administration, took up the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and three transgender teens, their families and a Memphis doctor who challenged the law, but the U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump dropped its opposition. In its ruling, the court said that the plaintiffs argued that Senate Bill 1 'warrants heightened scrutiny because it relies on sex-based classifications.' But the court found that neither of the classifications considered, those based on age and medical use, are determined 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,' the ruling states. The ruling says the application of the law 'does not turn on sex,' either, because it doesn't prohibit certain medical treatments for minors of one sex while allowing it for minors of the opposite sex. The House Republican Caucus issued a statement saying, 'This is a proud day for the Volunteer State and for all who believe in protecting the innocence and well-being of America's children.' Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who sponsored the bill, said he is grateful the court ruled that states hold the authority to protect children from 'irreversible medical procedures.' 'The simple message the Supreme Court has sent the world is 'enough is enough,'' Johnson said in a statement. The Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group, expressed dismay at the decision: 'We are profoundly disappointed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to side with the Tennessee legislature's anti-transgender ideology and further erode the rights of transgender children and their families and doctors. We are grateful to the plaintiffs, families, and the ACLU for fighting on behalf of more than 1.3 million transgender adults and 300,000 youth across the nation.' The group said gender-affirming care saves lives and is supported by medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association. The court also rejected plaintiffs' argument that the law enforces 'a government preference that people conform to expectations about their sex.' The court found that laws that classify people on the basis of sex require closer scrutiny if they involve 'impermissible stereotypes.' But if the law's classifications aren't covertly or overtly based on sex, heightened review by the court isn't required unless the law is motivated by 'invidious discriminatory purpose.' 'And regardless, the statutory findings on which SB1 is premised do not themselves evince sex-based stereotyping,' the ruling says. In response to the outcome, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said Tennessee voters' common sense won over 'judicial activism' on a law spurred by an increase in treatment for transgender children. 'I commend the Tennessee legislature and Governor Lee for their courage in passing this legislation and supporting our litigation despite withering opposition from the Biden administration, LGBT special interest groups, social justice activists, the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and even Hollywood,' Skrmetti said. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the ruling just moments after it came out after being asked about it during a press conference. 'This Supreme Court seems to have forgotten that one of their jobs is to protect individual rights and protect individuals from being discriminated against,' Schumer said. 'It's an awful decision.' Democrats, he said, are 'going to explore every solution,' though he didn't elaborate. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion: 'This case 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. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best. Our role is not 'to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic' of the law before us, but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.' The ACLU said in a statement the decision is based on the record and context of the Tennessee case and doesn't extend to other cases involving transgender status and discrimination. Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, called the ruling 'devastating,' but despite the setback said transgender people still have healthcare options. 'The court left undisturbed Supreme Court and lower court precedent that other examples of discrimination against transgender people are unlawful,' Strangio said in a statement. Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@ SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Wall Street Journal
44 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
European, Asian Stocks Fall Amid Geopolitical Tensions; U.S. Markets Closed
European and Asian stock markets fell Thursday, while U.S. markets were closed for the Juneteenth holiday, but investors continued to steer clear of risky assets amid geopolitical concerns centered on the Middle East. President Trump told senior aides that he approved attack plans for Iran but was holding off to see if it would abandon its nuclear program, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
