Targeting? Or protecting?

CNN slobbers over Chase Strangio:

Strangio, an attorney for the ACLU, is set to make history Wednesday as the first known transgender person to argue before the US Supreme Court. And he’ll do it as part of the most high-profile dispute on the docket this session.

The caseUS v. Skrmetti, challenges a Tennessee law that bans treatments, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers, for transgender minors and imposes civil penalties on doctors who violate the prohibitions. Some two dozen similar laws have been enacted in recent years in Republican-led states.

Wait a second though. The putative treatments aren’t actually treatments. They’re more like medical malpractice.

The justices will decide whether Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for children and adolescents violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, a question that could allow a majority of the court to hold that laws targeting transgender people are unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Or a majority of the court could hold that the laws protect people who think they’re the opposite sex from drastic interventions.

A ruling along those lines would give civil rights lawyers a powerful tool for fighting anti-trans laws on bathroom accessschool sports and pronouns. A ruling that allows Tennessee’s ban to stand, by contrast, could be seen as a tacit endorsement of those policies, clearing the way for states to pass still more laws aimed at trans Americans.

But, again, the laws aren’t “anti-trans” unless you assume that the whole edifice of trans ideology is healthy and useful and entirely fair to everyone. What if it’s not?

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