Skrmetti and birth equality

This is part of SCOTUSblog’s term in review series, in which scholars analyze some of the most significant cases of the 2024-25 Supreme Court term.

In Kousisis v. United States, decided on May 22, the Supreme Court considered the breadth of federal wire and mail fraud offenses and unanimously rejected a requirement that a fraud victim suffer a net economic loss. Instead, the court focused on whether the fraudster’s misrepresentations were material – that is, whether they would have affected the victim’s decision to engage in the fraudulent transaction in the first place.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Eight migrants deported from Djibouti to South Sudan, Homeland Security says (Reuters)
• Trump wasn’t the only Supreme Court winner this year. Here’s the scorecard. (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Why Roberts and Gorsuch may decide the Supreme Court’s blockbuster transgender sports case (John Fritze and Devan Cole, CNN)
• One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it (Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post)
• Justices Alito and Thomas: Bring Us a Case on Parental Consent Regarding Child’s Abortion (Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review)

Happy 4th of July! I hope you have a wonderful Independence Day.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Friday morning read:

• Judges are finding workarounds to Trump’s big Supreme Court win (Kyle Cheney and Hassan Ali Kanu, Politico)
• Supreme Court rejects Montana’s bid to revive parental consent law for minors’ abortions (Lindsay Whitehurst, AP)
• Federal prison guards allegedly beat an inmate to a pulp. The Supreme Court says he can’t sue. (Billy Binion, Reason)
• Ghost guns may make a comeback, despite a Supreme Court ruling (Martin Kaste, NPR)
• Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice? (Alexis Coe, The New York Times)

This is part of SCOTUSblog’s term in review series, in which scholars analyze some of the most significant cases of the 2024-25 Supreme Court term. For a contrasting view on United States v. Skrmetti, please see this piece by Craig Konnoth.

The majority opinion in United States v. Skrmetti is both measured and bold. By its terms, the decision leaves for another day questions like whether the court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County applies outside of the hiring and firing contexts governed by Title VII and whether transgender individuals constitute a quasi-suspect class. Yet the decision is also a clear victory for the legal point of view that a reference to sex does not necessarily trigger heightened scrutiny. And the way the court reaches that conclusion – by reaffirming that the biological differences between men and women matter – suggests that a majority of the court may view some lines as constitutionally permissible, such as laws that separate bathrooms and sports based on sex.

This is part of SCOTUSblog’s term in review series, in which scholars analyze some of the most significant cases of the 2024-25 Supreme Court term. For a contrasting view on United States v. Skrmetti, please see this piece by Erin Hawley.

To uphold Tennessee’s ban on pediatric gender-affirming care, the court in United States v. Skrmetti hid from the specter of discrimination. The court’s opinion repeatedly highlighted statutory language (which appeared only once in the statute) that targeted certain diagnoses. Yet it all but ignored language that appeared several times in the statute that explicitly targeted minors based on sex. Thus, the court concluded that the law did not discriminate against people – it only discriminated against medical diagnoses. Such reasoning mischaracterized the arguments at issue, the court’s prior doctrine, and the medicine involved.