The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily allowed an Idaho ban on gender-affirming treatment for minors to take effect, a signal that at least some justices seem comfortable with joining another front in the culture wars.
On the side of state officials who had asked the court to unblock the law, the justices split, with a majority of conservative justices voting to uphold the ban over the objections of three liberal justices. The judges also made it clear that their decision will remain in place until the appeals process is completed.
The court clarified that it would allow the ban to apply to all but the plaintiffs who brought the action.
Although emergency docket orders often do not include reasons, the decision included considerations by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, and Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, with Judge Amy Connie Barrett.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan entered a dissent.
The law, passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, makes it a felony for doctors to provide medical care to minors, including hormone therapy.
States across the country have pushed to limit transgender rights. At least 20 states with Republican-controlled legislatures, including Idaho, have enacted legislation limiting access to gender transition care for minors.
Idaho officials had appealed to the Supreme Court after the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco upheld a temporary block on the law as disputes continue in lower courts.
The law, the Protection of Vulnerable Children Act, makes it a crime for medical providers to offer medical care to transgender teenagers.
Idaho Attorney General Raul R. Labrador, in his emergency filing, said the case raised a recurring question that a majority of justices had expressed interest in: whether a court can issue what’s known as a blanket injunction, which freezes a state law to take effect — not only for the parties directly involved in the case, but for all.
Mr. Labrador argued that a federal court had erred in applying the freeze so broadly. “The plaintiffs are two minors and their parents and the injunction covers two million,” he wrote.
The temporary ban on the law meant “leaving vulnerable children subject to procedures that even plaintiffs’ experts agree are inappropriate for some of them,” he added.
Mr. Labrador continued, “These procedures have lifelong, irreversible consequences, with more and more minors expressing regret for going down this path.”
The plaintiffs, two minors and their parents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that this case was not the appropriate vehicle to address concerns about universal mandates.
And this is because the four plaintiffs are anonymous, referred to only by pseudonyms. If the court were to limit the stay of the Idaho law to only those directly involved in the litigation, the plaintiffs, including minors, would be forced to “disclose their identities as transgender plaintiffs in this lawsuit to medical and pharmacy staff every time they visited a doctor or sought to fill their prescriptions.”
