Christine Flowers: In Skrmetti, Justice Barrett explains it all

This week, in United States v. Skrmetti, the high court upheld a Tennessee ban on certain medical treatments which would allow children to change their genders to align with their identity.

What is called “gender affirming care” by some, and “mutilation” by others, was not the central issue addressed by the court.

It was whether those procedures could be used on children. A six-judge majority held that Tennessee’s ban was constitutional, opening up the door to other states which might want to take similar steps.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, in which the other five conservative justices joined. But there were fiery dissents from the three liberals, as expected.

And the real surprise, and delight, was the concurrence from Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

For Supreme Court geeks like me, poring over the different decisions is like gorging at an “all you can eat” Olive Garden bread and salad buffet.

The majority decision always controls the outcome. The dissents are usually dramatic and colorful, like the ones written by the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia.

Sometimes they even become the actual law decades later as society evolves, like the legendary dissents from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

But the concurrences are the ones I watch, because they tend to signal where the court might be going in the not-so-distant future.

That’s what I hope happens with Barrett’s opinion, which should bring her back into MAGA’s good graces after being criticized for ruling too often against President Donald Trump.

I doubt she cares, nor should she. Her decision to join the dissenting liberals when they ruled that Trump could not use the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members was right on target.

But back to the trans children.

While the majority ruled that the ban was constitutional because it did not directly target trans people, Barrett went to the heart of the matter and courageously stated that being “trans” is not a suspect group, and therefore does not deserve special consideration under the law or what is called “heightened scrutiny.”

I say “courageously,” because that immediately got her tagged as a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe, and every other whiny epithet that the left drags out when things don’t go their way in the cultural revolution.

She was called these things because she made the self-evident observation that unlike race and sex, trans individuals have not historically faced discrimination under the law, which is essential when assessing these sorts of due process and equal protection cases.

The Supreme Court geek in me rejoiced at these words: “For purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, the relevant question is whether the group has been subject to a longstanding pattern of discrimination in the law. In other words, we ask whether the group has suffered a history of de jure discrimination.”

Boom! It’s not whether you can’t use a bathroom or play on a soccer team. It’s about the law, and how it treats you, and I’m sorry but trans folk have not been the victims of Jim Crow.

The more important point, here, is a court ruling that children cannot be subject to the whims of adults.

I have always believed that these social justice warriors use children as the tip of the spear for their own interests, and that, to me, is abuse.

As someone who has dealt with women who are desperate to protect their daughters from being genitally mutilated in compliance with horrific cultural traditions, I see any sort of gender-altering surgery on children as an equal mutilation of nature.

Children cannot consent, as we know from laws that make it illegal to execute juvenile offenders or that set thresholds for marriage and sexual activity.

Their parents should not be able to consent for them in irreversible medical procedures.

The decision by the Supreme Court is an important one, but it’s not the end of the story.

Other states could, if they wanted to, provide these so-called “medical treatments” to children who are aided and abetted by their parents in this dangerous acquiescence to confusion and social evolution.

That is why the acknowledgment by Barrett that trans individuals are not a suspect class that has historically suffered legal discrimination is an important one, beyond the initial determination that these bans can be upheld.

Barrett is pointing out that just because some people, including parents, feel that they or their children are not getting everything they want does not mean that they are entitled to heightened consideration under the law.

Not everything is a right, especially when some of those things are extremely damaging and the denial of access to those things is actually an attempt to protect children from abuse.

Move over, Antonin, and make room on my hero podium for Amy.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and lifelong Philadelphian. @flowerlady61

This piece was originally published in the Delco Daily Times.