Rights activists speak out after US Supreme Court allows transgender youth care ban to stand
Transgender rights activists rally in Washington, D.C., after the US Supreme Court backs a Republican-supported ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors on June 18, 2025 in a setback for transgender rights that could bolster efforts by states to defend other measures targeting transgender people. The justices ruled that the ban did not violate the US Constitution's 14th Amendment promise of equal protection. They upheld a lower court's decision upholding Tennessee's law barring medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
REUTERS VIDEO
Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net
00:00Some projects, they got knocked down. They didn't get knocked down. Same-sex marriage, they got knocked down. They didn't get knocked down. The freer writers, the old self, they got knocked down. They didn't get knocked down. The trans movement, it's knocked down. It's not knocked down. It's up. We keep us safe.
00:18Isn't it just about trans people? When they target undocumented folks, they're targeting us. In this time, you know, the Supreme Court isn't built to affirm us. Got it wrong. So today, did the Supreme Court get it right? No.
00:41They can say I'm a woman, but I live as a man. I live as a man. I live as a man. I live through this world as a man.
00:57Nothing they say, nothing will ever change that. I mean, I think we're at a standing point in this country. And yes, things do feel like they're going backwards.
01:09But it's also, um, it's also keeping us together and we're going to fight no matter what.
01:17In the face of health cuts. No! In the face of discrimination. No! In the face of...
01:23And boys, we'll slow down their discriminatory campaign. It will stop...
01:28We have no choice but to take out this fight for the youth and families across the country.
01:34I think that, um, they've been slowly chipping away at our rights. Not only the rights of trans people, but of other LGBTQ people, of immigrants, of people of color.
01:49It's all moving in the same direction. And I think we're starting to, uh, they're starting to create a backlash against that.
01:57I think that the protests that happened this, this weekend, this last weekend, were indicative of a growing movement in the United States
02:05that is going to push back a lot of this. But we just have to get through this process, through this, uh, this era of unrest.
02:14And we need to push the fascist, uh, tendencies back into the dark corners of American life where they belong.
02:22They're going to be able to organize, mobilize, and educate.
02:28If you're going to wait without a fight, you've got another thing coming.
02:32It's not to never back down.
02:34But it's not the end of the story. I'm so proud of the great Tennessee family.
