How To Stand Up For Kids In The Wake of US v. Skrmetti

June 20, 2025

On Wednesday, June 18,  the US Supreme Court stomped on the rights of trans youth and the parents and doctors who provide care for them by upholding a law that denies them important gender-affirming healthcare services. This is care that care that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Medical Association, and many other major medical associations consider appropriate and often necessary for trans youth.

The argument put forth by the United States (which supported trans rights at the time the case was brought) was that the Tennessee law at the heart of the case amounted to sex discrimination because the very same medical care is used for similar reasons without controversy when the patients are cisgender. For example, puberty blockers are offered to cisgender youth to stave off the early onset of puberty. Why would they do this? For several reasons, a primary one being the social comfort and safety of the child. Dr. Bahera Schweiger of Cedars-Sinai puts it this way:

“We want to make sure development isn’t happening too quickly, so that the child feels comfortable around their peers—not different or in a body that’s older than they are emotionally,”

Transgender kids deserve the same consideration. Since Tennessee’s law essentially treats people differently as a result of their sex, the argument was that the lower court needed to apply a stricter level of scrutiny in determining whether or not people’s rights were being violated. Six justices found otherwise, and here we are.

It’s not just Tennessee. Twenty-four other states have similar bans on care, which will now stand as a result of this Supreme Court decision. Two others have bans that are currently blocked by state courts. The ACLU estimates that over 100,000 trans youth live in these states, about one-third of all the trans youth in the country. That’s a lot of kids and teens who will now be denied health care important for their physical and mental well-being. And since the federal funding that allowed The Trevor Project to provide LGBTQ+ crisis support on the 988* line has been cut, these young people need us to step up in a big way.

Here’s what they need to know from us:

• Your government may not support you right now, but we do.
• You are loved, and your life matters.
• Hard as it was, there are older trans folks who came up without gender-affirming care, especially in their youth, and while you deserve that care, we can help you survive without it for now.
• If you are looking for queer- or trans-specific mental health support or other health resources right now:
  • Call The Trevor Project directly at 1-866-488-7386 or text ‘START’ to 678-678. Support is available 24 hours a day.
  • Call the Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 (limited hours).
  • Visit the incomparable queer sexual health education website Scarleteen.
  • Pick up a copy of Kate Bornstein’s book “Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws,” now in a second edition and deserving of a place on every young person’s bookshelf.

Let me say this one again: You are not alone. You are loved. Your life matters.

We at Woodhull know that our right to the conditions necessary for a healthy life and our right to freedom from discrimination are grounded in our fundamental human rights. We have these rights, regardless of whether our government agrees. It is not the government’s job to grant these rights. Rather, its job is to protect them. Despite this, Sam Ames, a civil rights lawyer writing at Medium.com, rightly reminds us all that queer rights and freedoms have not historically been protected by our governments, whether in the form of the courts, legislatures, or executives. Such protections, where we have secured them, are relatively new. Instead, our rights and freedoms have been protected at the community level by people who came together, organized, and took care of one another.

That is what we must do now, so that the young people around us see that this fight isn’t over and that their lives have promise, regardless of the kind of medical care they can access in the near term.

Andy Izenson, of the Chosen Family Law Center, writing on Facebook, reminds us that being denied access to gender-affirming care before adulthood does not have to be a death sentence. We can support our youth and help them see that their future is still theirs. We need our kids to see our strength reflecting their strength back at them. We need them to see our faith in them and our love for them. We need them to know that their identities and their bodies are beautiful just as they are.

And we need to keep fighting. This is far from over.

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*While the funding for LGBTQ+-specific counseling has been cut, the 988 line is still open to support all people regardless of sexual or gender identity. Call or text 988 or or go to https://chat.988lifeline.org/