The Supreme Court was met with a feisty debate over gender-affirming care, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressing concern that the court was undermining its own precedent. She invoked the landmark 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, saying that the court’s bedrock equal protection cases were being undermined.
Jackson compared the Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors to the Virginia ban, pointing out that both state’s arguments for why the laws passed constitutional muster were similar. She expressed worry that the court was giving too much deference to state officials and not recognizing the harm caused by discriminatory laws.
The court’s liberal justices have expressed concern that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade has made other landmark civil rights cases, including Loving, vulnerable to attack. Jackson’s comments drew attention to the parallels between the Tennessee law and the Virginia ban, and the need for the court to recognize the harm caused by discriminatory laws.
The justices’ debate highlighted the concern that the court may be withdrawing from its own precedent and undermining decades of progress in civil rights. As the arguments concluded, Jackson’s concerns seemed to go unheeded, and it appeared that a majority of the court was prepared to support the Tennessee law.
