In a vote along party lines on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Idaho’s ban on dangerous puberty-blocking drugs and radical transgender surgeries for kids.
In its 6-3 decision with the court’s three most liberal justices in opposition, the court ruled that Idaho’s 2023 law may go into effect.
The court did say, though, that the law cannot be imposed on the litigants of the lawsuit against the state who are trying to get the law reversed as their lawsuit continues through the courts.
Per National Review:
The Court granted Idaho’s emergency request after U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled that the state’s government could not enforce the law during ongoing litigation and argued that the measure likely violates what she saw as parents’ rights to decide the medical treatment their children receive. The Idaho state government has appealed the December ruling to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that body has yet to rule on the matter.
The Idaho attorney general, Raul Labrador (R), who previously represented the state’s first congressional district and later served as chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, argued that Winmill’s preliminary injunction should have focused only on the two plaintiffs and that the district court judged overreached in blocking the law in its entirety before it could take effect.
The three liberals, Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor, voted to uphold the injunction, but the rest found that it was overly broad and should only apply to the two plaintiffs in the case challenging the law.
Some 24 states have some recently passed rules to restrict transgenderism including, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
One imagines that sooner or later, the high court will be tasked with taking direct case3es on whether transgenderism is a “right.”
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