Roberts Court to invent inalienable right to impose disabilities on LGBTQ people

Apparently in consecutive terms the Republican Six are going to rule that states can ban medical treatments for trans people that doctors think are appropriate but cannot ban “gender conversion” therapy that vast majorities of doctors consider harmful and counterproductive:

Midway through Tuesday’s arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked a question that stripped away the veneer of constitutional principle from the Supreme Court’s latest blatant culture war. Last term, she noted, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Now, in Chiles, the same court seemed poised to strike down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors. Both regulations “work in basically the same way,” she noted, prohibiting treatments designed to change a child’s gender expression. The difference is that Tennessee aims to erase transgender identity, while Colorado seeks to affirm it. “I’m just, from a very broad perspective, concerned,” Jackson said, “about making sure that we have equivalence with respect to these things.” Does the Constitution really take sides in this battle, blessing states that discriminate against transgender youth while condemning those that protect them?

As interpreted by this Supreme Court, the short answer is yes: The Constitution does little to protect LGBTQ+ rights and much to subvert them. There is little doubt that the Republican-appointed justices will use Chiles to weaken or destroy protections against conversion therapy for minors. In the process, they may insist that they are simply following neutral principles wherever they lead and will safeguard pro-LGBTQ+ speech in the future too. Don’t believe it. As this case lays bare, the court’s feints at evenhanded justice merely obscure its weaponization of constitutional liberties in service of the religious right’s agenda.

Chiles is a test case engineered to invalidate laws that ban licensed counselors from attempting to change a minor patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. About half the states have enacted these laws, often on a bipartisan basis with strong public support. Extensive evidence shows that it is impossible to forcibly alter a young person’s gender or sexuality, and dangerous to try. For that reason, every major medical group in the United States endorses prohibitions against conversion therapy. Conservative Christian counselors, however, have long opposed these laws, arguing that they impermissibly censor protected speech. (Critically, they do not apply to family members, religious figures, “life coaches,” or anyone besides licensed therapists.) The Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right law firm, manufactured Chiles so the Supreme Court would have an opportunity to rule that therapists have a First Amendment right to attempt to “convert” LGBTQ+ children. After Donald Trump returned to the White House, his Justice Department joined the case on the side of the plaintiff, a Christian therapist named Kaley Chiles.

There’s also nobody involved in the case who has been injured by this law, and hence nobody with standing, but obviously the Court’s Republicans won’t care. And this contradiction has already been evident in the context of abortion:

But no one should be fooled: This court does not dispense justice impartially when it delves into the culture wars. Just look at abortion. The Supreme Court allows states to make doctors parrot anti-abortion propaganda to their patients, compelling speech on the basis of viewpoint. Yet the court forbids states from requiring crisis pregnancy centers to tell patients they do not have a license to practice medicine. Anti-abortion advocates therefore get stronger First Amendment rights than pro-choice providers do. Or look at Jackson’s example: Last June, in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee statute that outlawed gender-affirming care for minors. The majority declared that courts “afford states wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty.” Now, just months later, SCOTUS shows no signs of affording such deference to Colorado’s law. Why?

Wilhoit’s Law is a kind of law, I suppose.