Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared Tennessee’s law against irreversible medical interventions that seek to change children’s sex to laws against interracial marriage.
The comparison came as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the Constitutionality of a Tennessee law protecting children from hormone therapies and surgical procedures that attempt to modify their sex.
“They sound in the same kinds of arguments that were made back in the day, 50’s and 60’s, with respect to racial classifications and inconsistencies. I’m thinking in particular about Loving,” Brown said, referencing the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which resulted in the overturning of the law prohibiting interracial marriage. The Justice added that she sees “parallels” as to “how this statute operates and how the anti-miscegnation statutes in Virginia operated.”
🚨INSANE
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson strains to compare U.S. v. Skrmetti to Loving v. Virginia, suggesting that a law protecting kids from experimental medical “treatments” to make them appear like the opposite sex is similar to a law preventing interracial… pic.twitter.com/7nAQQkZzQD
— Tyler O’Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024
Brown continued on with her comparison between the two laws. “In that case, everyone seemed to concede up front that a racial classification was being drawn by the statute, the question was whether it was discriminatory because it applied to both races,” Brown said, referencing Loving v. Virginia.
“When you look at the structure of that law it looks, in terms of … you know you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics, it’s sort of the same thing.”
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“It’s interesting to me that we now have this different argument, and I wonder whether Virginia could have gotten away what they did here by just making a classification argument the way that Tennessee is here in this case,” Brown went on to add.
Despite Brown’s comments, however, some analysis of the case indicates that the Supreme Court may be leaning towards siding with Tennessee and upholding the state’s law, potentially opening the door to a federal law modeled on it.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh “all seemed to come down on Tennessee’s side,” an analysis in Axios reads, adding that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are unlikely to oppose the ban.
Justice Kavanaugh, who was nominated to his position by Trump, also pointed to Europe’s strict regulations on the use of irreversible medical interventions that seek to change the sex of children.