| Donald Trump won election promising to roll back transgender rights. Now the Supreme Court is set to consider piling on. The justices tomorrow will hear arguments on trans rights for the first time in five years. They will be considering the constitutionality of a Tennessee law banning minors from receiving gender-affirming treatments including puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The case is likely to determine the fate of similar laws in about two dozen states, all enacted since 2021. It comes at a fraught time for transgender Americans, who were put in the middle of the nation’s cultural conflict in the presidential campaign. Trump and his allies spent tens of millions on anti-trans ads, and the candidate at his rallies repeatedly raised the specter of transgender athletes overwhelming their female competitors. And while Democrat Sarah McBride made history in November as the first transgender person elected to Congress, Republicans in the House are moving to stop her from using the women’s restrooms in the Capitol. Until now, the Supreme Court has been a refuge for transgender rights. In 2020 the court, with conservatives Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts in the majority, ruled 6-3 that federal law bars job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But that case was different in potentially crucial respects. For starters, it turned on the meaning of a federal statute that bars discrimination “because of” a person’s sex – a phrase that doesn’t appear in the Constitution. And Tennessee contends that, unlike the employer in the job-discrimination case, the state isn’t treating the two genders differently — it’s banning risky treatments for boys and girls alike. Opponents say the law violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause by allowing, for example, testosterone treatments for children designated as male at birth but not for those designated as female. The case may be a prelude to other polarizing fights, including several pending appeals the court is likely to address after it resolves the Tennessee case. Among the issues: laws that ban transgender women and girls from competing for their schools on female athletic teams. — Greg Stohr | 
