Supreme Court Reinterprets “Equal Protection” to Mean “Anything But Equal” in Trans Youth Ruling
By Nigel Featherstonehaugh-Smythe, Lead Political Correspondent for Affairs of Dubious Statesmanship
June 18, 2025 – Washington, D.C.
In a ruling that legal scholars are already calling “a conceptual backflip in judicial ballet flats,” the United States Supreme Court has upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, declaring that it does not violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause—because, apparently, if you discriminate against everyone under 18, it’s not technically discrimination.
The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts while presumably wearing a blindfold and juggling a copy of the Constitution, determined that Tennessee’s law, which prohibits puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other medically accepted treatments for transgender youth, was a “neutral regulation of healthcare” and not an “impermissible classification based on sex or gender identity.”
In other words: If the state bans lifesaving care for all children, regardless of how desperately they need it, that’s equality—like handing everyone an anchor before tossing them into the ocean and calling it a swimming lesson.
“The law does not target transgender youth,” Roberts wrote with the serene detachment of a man solving sudoku on a sinking ship. “Rather, it limits certain treatments for all minors, irrespective of their gender identity.”
This legal logic, though dazzling in its circularity, has raised eyebrows among those still bound by reality. Medical professionals, child welfare advocates, and every credible scientific body that doesn’t meet in a Cracker Barrel conference room have universally decried the ban as dangerous, discriminatory, and ideologically driven.
Yet the Court, now something of a performative theater troupe in black robes, has taken the stance that legislatures know best—even when those legislatures confuse endocrinology with exorcism.
The Cosmic Joke of Rational Basis
The decision relies heavily on what’s known as rational basis review, a legal doctrine that essentially means the government can do whatever it wants as long as it claims to have a reason—and that reason doesn’t have to be particularly good, or even plausible, so long as it can be typed on official letterhead.
In this case, Tennessee claimed it was protecting children from “experimental” treatments. This would be rather sweet, if the same state didn’t also allow minors to undergo nose jobs, breast augmentations, or ride a bucking bronco in front of 20,000 people at a rodeo without a helmet.
Justice Gorsuch reportedly nodded approvingly during oral arguments when Tennessee’s solicitor general used the phrase “biological sanctity,” a term previously reserved for livestock breeding manuals and certain Victorian ghost stories.
Liberal Dissent: “Abandonment and Bigotry”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent that may or may not have been singed by actual fire, accused the Court of engaging in “abandonment masquerading as restraint.”
“We are not neutral when we refuse to see harm,” she wrote. “We are complicit.”
She further noted that the law “leaves transgender minors to suffer severe distress, denied the care their doctors, parents, and therapists agree is necessary, simply because their identities offend the ideological sensibilities of the state.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a concurring dissent, dryly observed that the Court “has become a legal vending machine that only accepts religious liberty tokens and expels basic human dignity.”
The Domino Effect
As news of the decision broke, a wave of jubilation swept across state legislatures currently engaged in competitive rounds of “Who Can Legislate the Most Transphobia Before Brunch?” At least 26 states are now poised to implement or expand similar bans, with some even considering prohibitions on discussing gender identity in schools, libraries, or polite company.
Governor Dusty Waltrip of Mississippi told reporters, “This ain’t about hate. This is about protecting kids—from themselves, their doctors, their parents, and, you know, facts.”
Stock in private youth conversion therapy camps reportedly surged 14% following the ruling, while sales of those faux-medieval chastity belts designed for metaphysical purity (available on Etsy) have tripled in select evangelical enclaves.
Medical Consensus vs. Judicial Coin Toss
It bears noting that every major medical association in the United States—the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society—has stated unequivocally that gender-affirming care for minors, when medically indicated, is both safe and necessary.
The Court’s response? A constitutional shrug.
“We defer to the legislature’s ability to weigh evidence,” the opinion noted, as though lawmakers possess some secret stash of scientific insight unavailable to, say, the entire medical profession.
This posture would be hilarious if it weren’t helping to codify cruelty. The Court, in its infinite deference to political bodies, has chosen to give up its mandate to protect minority rights—not with a bang, but with a bureaucratic shoulder-shrug so heavy it might crush an entire generation.
Final Notes from a Shrouded Republic
The ruling, while masquerading as a neutral legal clarification, is in truth a garish emblem of America’s spiritual confusion. A nation founded on liberty now finds itself parsing which types of liberty are appropriate for which bodies, and at what age. The Court, which once struck down segregation and established marriage equality, has in this moment offered us a new standard:
If you treat everyone with equal disregard, is it still injustice?
