Supreme Court to decide whether states can protect children from experimental medical procedures

ADF attorneys file friend-of-the-court brief with high court supporting Tennessee’s child safety law

WASHINGTON – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday in United States of America v. Skrmetti, urging the court to let state legislatures protect children from experimental medical procedures. In the case, which the Supreme Court will hear later this year, the state of Tennessee is defending its law that protects children from harmful, unnecessary, and high-risk medical procedures that alter their bodies to make them look like the opposite sex.

The Supreme Court decided to review this case after the Biden-Harris administration appealed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upholding Tennessee’s law. As it has in other cases across the country, the administration has taken aggressive actions to invalidate laws like Tennessee’s protecting children from these harmful medical procedures that can have life-long consequences.

“Tennessee is right to regulate medicine consistent with biological reality and protect children from harmful, experimental, and often irreversible medical procedures,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch. “Relying on bad science, activists and the Biden-Harris administration have pushed these harmful medical procedures across the country and even taken steps to prevent state legislatures from regulating these procedures. These procedures have devastated countless lives, which is why countries that were previously leaders in so-called ‘gender affirming’ care are reversing course and curtailing these experimental efforts to permanently alter children’s bodies. We urge the Supreme Court to affirm the lower court’s ruling that Tennessee is free to implement laws that follow the best science available in protecting vulnerable children from high-risk medical procedures.”

Currently, 26 states have laws that regulate similar procedures, and European countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the United Kingdom have each concluded that the risks of these experimental procedures outweigh their benefits.

In Idaho, ADF attorneys are serving as co-counsel alongside the state attorney general defending a similar law in that state. In the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that Idaho can enforce its law against everyone but plaintiffs and can protect children throughout the state as the case proceeds. The state is now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to allow Idaho to fully enforce its law.

ADF attorneys are also serving as co-counsel alongside the state of Alabama defending its law protecting children from dangerous medical interventions.

“ADF is deeply troubled about the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children with gender dysphoria,” the attorneys write in the brief. “Systematic reviews around the world have shown (a) insufficient evidence to support such use, and (b) the risks to children outweigh the hypothetical benefits. This has led many European nations and American states to regulate puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children with gender dysphoria. Given the high stakes and uncer­tain science, such caution is warranted.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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