A Supreme Court Justice triggered backlash after she compared the case weighing in on states banning gender transitions for minors to past state laws of banning interracial marriage

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was slammed on Wednesday after she compared a Tennessee law banning gender transitions for minors to past laws banning interracial marriage.

Jackson and the other justices heard over two hours of oral arguments during the U.S. v. Skrmetti case, which involves the constitutionality of state laws banning gender transition medical procedures for minors.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that state laws have the effect of “sex discrimination,” since the minor’s gender is key when determining specific medical treatments for those seeking to transition.

After Prelogar’s remarks and exchanges with the other justices, Jackson said that she saw a “parallel” between U.S. v. Skrmetti and the landmark Loving v. Virginia case in 1967.

“Interesting to me that you mentioned precedent, because some of these questions about sort of who decides and the concerns and legislative prerogatives, etc., sound very familiar to me,” Jackson said. “They sound in the same kinds of arguments that were made back in the day—50s, 60s—with respect to racial classifications and inconsistencies. I’m thinking in particular about Loving v. Virginia, and I’m wondering whether you thought about the parallels, because I see one as to how this statute operates and how the anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia operated.”

Jackson also said there was a “potential comparison” between the Loving case and Skrmetti and wondered if Virginina could have banned interracial marriage by following Tennessee’s reasoning.

Jackson’s comments caused an uproar on social media.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called Jackson’s statements an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.

“Yes, because banning a white person from marrying a black person is the same thing as cutting off a 10-year-old’s gen*tals,” co-owner of Trending Politics Collin Rugg said.

  • LookBehindYouNowAndThen@lemmy.world
    4·
    13 days ago

    In Nazi Germany, transgender people were prosecuted, barred from public life, forcibly detransitioned, and imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. Though some factors, such as whether they were considered “Aryan”, heterosexual with regard to their birth sex, or capable of useful work had the potential to mitigate their circumstances, transgender people were largely stripped of legal status by the Nazi state.

    The GOP court will be following reactionary tradition.

    This is what Make America Great Again means: persecution of the people they hate.

    • Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.comOP
      14·
      13 days ago

      Notice, though, this is about minors receiving life altering surgical procedures for a condition that is highly debatable… It can be said to be an attempt to prevent the mutilation of the healthy bodies of minors, and taking a stand to be good stewards of them.

      I’d also point out that the very first successful transgender surgery was in 1952, and even the language around transgenderism was not even beginning to be fixed in the 1970s, not even among activists (immortalized in the name of the group ‘STAR’).

      Trans people only existed in a very broad, big tent sense of the definition.

      Perhaps a few of them were even members of the SA, that was famously purged due to its homosexuality. Nazism did embrace paganism and at different points even hinted at the future practice of polygamy. They even had ‘breeding’ programs. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where they would have been more pagan and receptive to ideas about homosexuality, though I suppose what ultimately prevents this is not Christianity, but the evolutionary view of homosexuality as a sign of social unfitness.