In victory lap, Justice Thomas rails against ‘self-described experts’ as ‘irrelevant’

The conservative majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled in U.S. v. Skrmetti that Tennessee’s law SB1 does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and should be judged under rational basis review rather than heightened scrutiny. The ruling leaves in place the state’s prohibitions on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender youth.

Roberts, writing for the majority, stopped short of extending Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision— which held that discrimination against transgender individuals is a form of sex discrimination under Title VII—to the Fourteenth Amendment context. “We have not yet considered whether Bostock’s reasoning reaches beyond the Title VII context, and we need not do so here,” Roberts wrote. “Changing a minor’s sex or transgender status does not alter the application of SB1.”

Justice Clarence Thomas joined the majority but wrote a separate concurring opinion laced with sharp criticism of the medical community, questioning the credibility of “self-proclaimed experts,” dismissing the term “gender-affirming care,” and urging judicial restraint in the face of contested scientific claims.

“In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct,” Thomas wrote. He praised the court’s decision for respecting Tennessee’s democratic process, arguing that the opinions of “major medical organizations” are “irrelevant” to constitutional interpretation.

“The views of self-proclaimed experts do not shed light on the meaning of the Constitution,” he added, citing the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Thomas compared the invocation of “medical consensus” in both Dobbs and Skrmetti, suggesting that deference to such consensus undermines the democratic process.

He further described the term “gender-affirming care” as a “sanitized description” that obscures the reality of the interventions in question. “This case carries a simple lesson,” Thomas concluded. “The American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a sharply worded dissent joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, accused the majority of abandoning transgender youth to political hostility.

“With fear and sadness, I dissent,” she wrote. “The majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”

Sotomayor’s dissent warned that the ruling does “irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause,” and accused the majority of allowing legislatures to disguise sex-based discrimination. “This Court should have called a spade a spade,” she wrote. “Instead, it invites further harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”

The ruling sets a precedent that may embolden other states considering similar bans, and highlights a growing rift between the court’s conservative supermajority and its liberal justices on questions of individual rights, science, and judicial deference to elected lawmakers.