Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti. The case involves a challenge to a Tennessee statute prohibiting chemical, hormonal or surgical treatment of minors for gender dysphoria. The case began as a suit by a private party, but the United States then intervened and filed its own complaint challenging the constitutionality of the statute. After a decision by the 6th Circuit reversing a preliminary injunction against enforcement, both the United States and the private plaintiff filed petitions for certiorari. The Supreme Court granted review only in the United States' case. Now with a change of Administrations, the United States has changed its position and no longer challenges the Tennessee statute. The United States on February 7 filed a letter (full text) with the Supreme Court, reading in part:
The Department has now determined that SB1 does not deny equal protection on account of sex or any other characteristic. Accordingly, the new Administration would not have intervened to challenge SB1—let alone sought this Court’s review of the court of appeals’ decision reversing the preliminary injunction against SB1.
Nevertheless, the United States believes that the confluence of several factors counsels against seeking to dismiss its case in this Court. The Court’s prompt resolution of the question presented will bear on many cases pending in the lower courts. Since granting certiorari last June, the Court has received full briefing and heard oral argument, including from the private plaintiffs, who have participated in this Court as respondents supporting the United States at the merits stage and who remain adverse to the state respondents in a dispute that has not become moot. Accordingly, the Court may resolve the question presented without either granting the private plaintiffs’ pending petition for a writ of certiorari, see L.W. v. Skrmetti, No. 23-466 (filed Nov. 1, 2023), or requesting further, likely duplicative briefing from the same parties about the same court of appeals judgment in the underlying suit between the private plaintiffs and the state respondents.
AP reports on the government's action.
