The United States Supreme Court has upheld a Tennessee law restricting medical interventions for minors who are seeking to transition to a gender different from their biological sex. In a video posted to X, Tennessee Attorney General (AG) Jonathan Skrmetti celebrated the 6-3 decision in United States v. Skrmetti.
“Today was a huge victory for Tennessee and the United States Supreme Court. We won in United States v. Skrmetti, defending Tennessee’s law that prohibits irreversible medical interventions for gender transition purposes for kids,” said Skrmetti in the video. “This is a big win for evidence-based medicine. This is a big win for democracy, for letting state governments decide what state laws should be.”
Landmark VICTORY for Tennessee, common sense, and America’s kids! #Skrmetti
➡️https://t.co/it4CtMhJlt pic.twitter.com/asJ85cS6Mo
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) June 18, 2025
“Thank you to everybody who supported this effort. Thank you to the Tennessee General Assembly and to the governor and to all the people who encouraged us and provided support through this litigation,” said Skrmetti. “We’re gonna keep fighting to protect Tennessee kids and we appreciate all of the prayers and encouragement along the way.”
Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti Celebrates Win in United States v. Skrmetti
Tennessee Senate Bill (SB) 1 was filed for introduction in November 2022. It began by noting that the legislature’s goal was to “protect the health and welfare of minors” and went on to describe dangers to minors who experience procedures including taking hormones and having their sex organs surgically removed.
“Not all harmful effects associated with these types of medical procedures when performed on a minor are yet fully known,” said the bill, “as many of these procedures, when performed on a minor for such purposes, are experimental in nature and not supported by high-quality, long-term medical studies.”
The bill stated:
A healthcare provider shall not perform or offer to perform on a minor, or administer or offer to administer to a minor, a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of: (1) Enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex; or (2) Treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.
Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill on March 2, 2023, and it was set to go into law on July 1, 2023. On April 20, 2023, three transgender minors, their parents, and a doctor filed a lawsuit against a number of defendants, including Skrmetti, the Tennessee Department of Health, and the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners.
The lawsuit described the distress suffered by people who experience gender dysphoria and argued that medical interventions have been adequately studied and have brought significant relief to the transgender plaintiffs. The suit claimed that SB 1 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment on the grounds that it does the following:
Discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status by prohibiting certain medical treatments only for transgender patients and only when those treatments are performed “for the purpose of . . . [e]nabling a minor to identify with, or live as,” a gender identity other than the sex designated at birth.
