Matt Walsh’s crusade pays off: SCOTUS protects Tennessee kids from gender mutilation

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court released its decision to uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-related medical interventions for minors.

The case, United States v. Skrmetti, was a 6-3 decision, with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. The decision is a historic breakthrough in the fight against transgender ideology. Similar to the Dobbs v. Jackson decision for abortion, the Supreme Court has sent the issue back to the states by clarifying that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit state-level restrictions on sex-change procedures and puberty blockers for minors.

Skrmetti called out the Biden DOJ for what it was really doing: ‘Attacking a bipartisan law that protects children from irreversible harm.’

This case has been building since September 2022 when the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh blew the whistle on Vanderbilt University for practicing gender-modification surgeries on minors. Walsh helped bring the issue to the attention of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. The Tennessee legislature took action and passed legislation the following February to ban the drugs and surgeries used to transition minors. The bill passed the Tennessee House 77-16, with 13 Democrats voting against it. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed the bill into law on March 2, 2023.

The left did not let the issue go quietly. On April 20, 2023, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Tennessee, claiming the law discriminated against children on the basis of sex. Six days later, the Biden Department of Justice joined in the legal attack, claiming the Tennessee law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. DOJ Assistant Attorney Kristen Clarke decried the law, saying it denied children “access to necessary medical care.”

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Skrmetti called out the Biden DOJ for what it was really doing: “Attacking a bipartisan law that protects children from irreversible harm.”

Although District Judge Eli Richardson initially blocked the law, his decision was overturned that September by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the law finally went into effect.

Rather than admit defeat, the ACLU and Biden DOJ appealed the case, filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. The following June, the court agreed to hear the case, and oral arguments took place on December 4, 2024. The Supreme Court typically takes around six months to decide complex cases, making this June 18 decision a fairly standard timeline.

‘Congress has no excuses left. If they have any moral sense, they will … end this evil industry once and for all.’

The decision has been met with triumphant approval from conservatives. In a statement to Blaze Media, Matt Walsh summarized his work on the issue: “Three years ago, we ripped the lid off Vanderbilt’s sickening pediatric clinic. That ignited Tennessee’s child mutilation ban. Today, the Supreme Court upheld this protection of children and we won.”

At the heart of the legal issue was the question of whether the Tennessee law discriminated on the basis of sex. If so, it would be subject to heightened legal scrutiny under the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Roberts, in the majority opinion, clarified that the law did not do so. Rather, the law “prohibits health care providers from administering puberty blockers or hormones to minors for certain medical uses, regardless of a minor’s sex.”

Consequently, the law “is not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and satisfies rational basis review.”

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In a statement to Blaze Media, Dr. Brad Watson, a legal scholar at Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Government, concurred with the majority opinion: “The Court was correct in refusing to apply heightened judicial scrutiny to a law prohibiting transgender treatment of minors. The majority recognizes that judges have no expertise in such matters and possess no constitutional warrant to second-guess legislative determinations so long as those determinations rest on a rational basis.”

Similar to the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, this decision gives states the freedom to legislate on the issue. The question that remains for conservatives is whether they will be able to effectively follow up on this decision with meaningful legislation at the state or national level.

Matt Walsh is among those pushing for the GOP to take decisive action to cement this victory. In his statement to Blaze Media, he called on Congress to ban these surgeries at a national level: “Congress has no excuses left. If they have any moral sense, they will end these state-by-state fights with a federal ban and end this evil industry once and for all.”

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