Northwestern expert on U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments in gender affirming care case
Northwestern Law LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic urge SCOTUS to reverse ruling banning health care for transgender youth in Tennessee, asks to consider the lengthy history of gender affirming care
CHICAGO --- The United States Supreme Court heard oral argument today, December 4, in U.S. v. Skrmetti — a landmark case and challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.
“This case is one of the most significant civil rights cases of our time,” said Kara Ingelhart, clinical assistant professor of law and founding director of the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. “Tennessee is one of two dozen states that have passed laws banning necessary health care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents. But, to be clear, the same medical interventions that are banned in Tennessee for treating gender dysphoria —hormone therapy and puberty blockers — are not prohibited to alleviate medical symptoms for other diagnoses in cisgender young people.”
In September, the Clinic — who is Counsel of Record — filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the U.S. v. Skrmetti case, highlighting the centuries-old medical practice of gender-affirming care in the United States, reiterating that the practice is not experimental.
The brief is similar to other historian amicus briefs in the past, e.g., the OAH brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (filed 2021), the OAH brief in Obergefell v. Hodges (filed 2015), and the brief of historians in Bostock v. Clayton County (filed 2019), with a focus on expertise in field medical history.
Read the amicus brief here. Kara N. Ingelhart, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Founding Director of the LGBTQI+ Rights Clinic, is Counsel of Record.
Professor Ingelhart is available to speak with media on the topic. If you’d like to arrange an interview with her, please reach out to Shanice Harris at shanice.harris@northwestern.edu .