US bishops back Tennessee puberty-blockers ban before Supreme Court

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an amicus curiae brief, urging the court to uphold to the Tennessee law. 

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging a Tennessee law that bans puberty blockers and other irreversible medical treatments for minors, the first case involving transgender treatment to reach the court. 

Six justices on the court’s conservative wing expressed scepticism about the wisdom of overturning the law.  

The Biden administration was among those challenging the law, arguing that such a ban violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. 

Transgender-related issues played a prominent role in the presidential campaign, with President-elect Donald Trump spending millions of dollars on a political advert that featured Vice President Kamala Harris expressing support for taxpayer-funded gender-reassignment surgery for prisoners. The advert also mocked the practice of listing pronouns on name badges and signatures as a sign of solidarity with those who insist their gender is non-binary. 

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed an amicus curiae brief, urging the court to uphold to the Tennessee law. 

It argued that previous court decisions that tried to balance various interests had failed to adequately protect the Catholic Church. For example, the 2015 Obergefell decision established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but also assured conservative religious organisations the ruling would not impact them, that their religious liberty protected them from having to perform marriages that contradicted their doctrinal or ethical tenets. The USCCB said that such assurances had not proved sufficient. 

“Despite these assurances, the Catholic Church and other Christian faithful have faced an onslaught of litigation using those cases as a sword to attack the ability of religious entities and individuals to adhere to bedrock teachings regarding marriage, sexuality, and the human body,” the brief stated. It was not clear from the text what legal remedy the bishops favour.

The USCCB has begun rewriting the Ethical and Religious Directives that govern care at Catholic health facilities. Some fear that liberal state governments may require the kind of transgender treatments the Tennessee law forbids.

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