Supreme Court’s transgender care fight creates conservative ‘reckoning’ over parental rights

Conservative groups have for years sought to reduce the government’s sway over parents’ childrearing choices, particularly when it comes to decisions about school and health care.

Conservative groups have for years sought to reduce the government’s sway over parents’ childrearing choices, particularly when it comes to decisions about school and health care. But the Supreme Court’s upcoming and potentially explosive transgender care case is dividing conservatives, with many of those same groups backing Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments, which critics say injects the state into family medical decisions and overrides parental rights. As a result, some notable conservatives are supporting the Biden administration’s challenge of that law. “Since when does a conservative say, ‘The state knows what is best for my child,’” said former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, an anti-Trump Republican who opposes Tennessee’s law. “If you decide a state can do this, then it puts all parental decisions at risk of being overruled by the government.” The Supreme Court will hear arguments December 4 in the most important transgender rights case the justices have ever tackled, reviewing a Tennessee law enacted last year that bans gender-affirming care for minors and imposes civil penalties for doctors who violate the prohibitions. Gender-affirming surgeries are not at issue because a lower court tossed out a challenge to those procedures. Though the high court declined to consider the parental rights question when it took the case earlier this year, the debate is nevertheless playing out in briefings and may come up during the court’s oral arguments.