On June 18, 2025, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that a Tennessee law blocking transsexual children from
being able to undergo puberty-blockers and gender-changing surgeries does not
violate the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court’s 6-3
opinion in U.S. v. Skrmetti was reported at the time to fall “largely
along conservative-liberal lines.”[1]
By this is mean ideological lines, both moral and political in nature.
Such is grist for the mill for the broad judgment of an electorate, in what is
otherwise known as popular sovereignty, which is superior to governmental
sovereignty in a republic. Add in the fact that Tennessee is a member-state in
a federal system in which the U.S. Supreme Court is on the federal level, and
the broad judgment of the electorate takes on more significance to the extent
that a federal system of an empire-scale union is in part supposed to take into
account and protect interstate ideological differences that defy one-size-fits-all
union-level policies. In other words, as cultural heterogeneity can be expected
in going from state to state in an empire-scale union-of-states, efforts “from
the top” to impose a single policy on every state do not allow the federation
to breath. Political pressure could be expected to build over time if such a
suffocating tendency eventuates, with the risk of dissolution increasing over
time as if depreciation.
The full essay is at "American Federalism and Equal Protection."
1. Josh Gerstein, “Supreme Court Upholds Tennessee’s Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Minors,” Politico.com, June 18, 2025.
