Yet, SB1 so explicitly engages in suspect classifications and so clearly uses them to discriminate against transgender minors that this charade not only defeats conventional legal analysis but also defies truth. First, only transgender people can suffer gender dysphoria, so there is simply no way a prohibition limited to this medical diagnosis does not turn on the patients’ here For comparison, long ago, the Court decided that because not all women get pregnant, pregnancy is not a sufficient proxy for being a woman and cannot make classification relying on it facially discriminatory based on sex. However, proxies are still part of conventional Equal Protection analysis, and gender dysphoria is the closest proxy possible for transgender identity, making its use analogous to targeting people wearing yarmulkas, which is undisputably a facially discriminatory act. Second, SB1 allows treating other (cisgender) minors with the same medications for different diagnoses, such as congenital disabilities or precocious puberty. Thus, the theory that the ban relies on age-based classification equally fails. Critically, the mislabeling of the classifications to evade heightened scrutiny does more than deny access to puberty blockers and hormone therapies: It disavows the living experience of transgender minors and their families.

Deviating from its routine adherence to a textualist approach, the conservative majority refused to account for SB1’s wording. The statutory language, however, is infused with ideological intent to discriminate against transgender minors, wielding rhetoric that distrusts and degrades them. For example, the text persistently reflects doubts about the existence and authenticity of gender identity by describing it not as an actual identity but only as a “purported” or “asserted” one. Worse, the language devalues even the problem of gender dysphoria itself. While the diagnosis’s scientific definition underscores “clinically significant distress,” SB1 reduces it to a mere “discomfort.”

Remarkably, the majority not only abandoned its equal protection jurisprudence and loyalty to textualism but also used its shadow docket to avoid reviewing SB1’s infringement on the rights of parents supporting transgender minors in the same term in which it dramatically expanded the rights of religious parents. At the same time, the Court actively joined the broader anti-trans project unleashed by the conservative movement. In the dozens of pages they wrote, none of the conservative justices agreed to call the medicinal treatment of gender dysphoria by its most common name, gender-affirming care. Instead, they carefully removed the idea of gender, the need for affirmation, and the necessity of care, replacing them all with the irregular phrase “sex transition treatments.”

Worse, the majority decision bolsters the second Trump administration’s assaults on transgender people. For example, the majority reiterated conservative talking points regarding high rates of regret among transgender adolescents, raising the allegation despite refuting evidence on the record to suggest that withholding treatment might be rational. Likewise, against a record showing a consensus in the American medical community, the majority looked to other countries to assert that treating minors with gender dysphoria is controversial.

Several conservative members of the Court went even further and used the litigation in Skrmetti as an opportunity to question transgender equality beyond the boundaries of the dispute before them. In doing so, they more than gestured at additional contexts in which they might be willing to undo LGBTQ+ constitutional rights. For instance, although the Court found no suspect classifications, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito unnecessarily echoed the conservative efforts to undo Bostock v. Clayton County—the precedent holding that it is impossible to discriminate against transgender (and homosexual) individuals without impermissibly discriminating based on sex. Similarly, Justice Amy Coney Barrett used Skrmetti to suggest that, because trans people fall outside of the Equal Protection Clause in the medical context, they also likely have no claims against regulations limiting their ability to use adequate bathrooms or participate in sports.

Most troubling, while presenting all these theories, the conservative majority callously ignored one thing: The grave and immediate danger of leaving distressed minors without any medical care, forcing them to struggle at least until they turn 18, all while their bodies grow further away from how they experience themselves.

Ultimately, Skrmetti betrays transgender adolescents and distorts the Equal Protection Clause by allowing, legitimizing, and incentivizing blunt ideological sex-based discrimination. It also demonstrates how, instead of protecting a vulnerable minority group as their constitutional duty demands, the Court’s conservatives side with Republican legislators while presenting their approach as judicial restraint. In reality, Skrmetti reveals the opposite of restraint: A willingness to abandon the constitutional order of equality before the law to enhance a brutal anti-trans campaign.

In 1999, Ruben Gutierrez was convicted of the murder of Escolastica Harrison and sentenced to death. Gutierrez has twice unsuccessfully sought post-conviction DNA testing to prove that, while he participated in robbing Harrison, he was not involved in her murder and therefore could not be subject to the death penalty under Texas law.

Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure permits post-conviction DNA testing in certain circumstances. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA)  concluded that Gutierrez was ineligible because, to receive DNA testing under Chapter 64, a prisoner must show that he “would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing.” There is, however, a serious conflict within Texas post-conviction law. One law would permit Gutierrez to file a second habeas petition with clear and convincing evidence that, even if guilty of the offense, he was not eligible for the death penalty. Chapter 64, however, only allows DNA testing if the results could prove actual innocence—not ineligibility for death.

Gutierrez sued in federal court, arguing that this conflict violated his right to procedural due process. While there is no substantive federal constitutional right to test DNA evidence, prisoners may argue that the procedures are “fundamentally inadequate to vindicate the substantive rights” that the state law has provided. The district court concluded that the statutory conflict meant that Texas’s procedures were “fundamentally inadequate” and granted Gutierrez a declaratory judgment to that effect.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear Gutierrez’s claims because he did not have standing. To have standing, a litigant must show an injury that is fairly traceable to the defendant’s conduct and that the injury is capable of redress by a favorable judicial ruling. The Fifth Circuit concluded that because the TCCA’s construction of Chapter 64 did not give Gutierrez a right to DNA testing, his injury was not redressable because a declaratory judgment was not likely to make the state prosecutor authorize testing. Two years ago, however, in Reed v. Goertz, the Supreme Court had held that Rodney Reed, another prisoner on Texas’s death row, had standing to challenge procedural due process flaws in Chapter 64.

In a short 6–3 opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and concluded that, just like Reed, Gutierrez had standing. Gutierrez had been denied access to the evidence to test it. If a federal court found that Texas’s law violated due process, the prosecutor could not justify denying DNA testing. As Justice Sotomayor explained in her majority opinion, “That a prosecutor might eventually find another reason, grounded in Article 64 or elsewhere, to deny a prisoner’s request for DNA testing does not vitiate his standing to argue that the cited reasons violated his rights under the Due Process Clause.” Justice Alito dissented because, while he agreed that Reed applied, he believed the majority had altered the test and ignored essential differences in the two cases. Although the Court did not reach the merits of Gutierrez’s arguments about procedural due process, Gutierrez at least provides prisoners seeking post-conviction DNA testing in Texas an opportunity to raise procedural due process arguments, even if they face an uphill battle.

A 2024 report by the Texas Defender Service highlighted serious flaws in the application of the state’s post-conviction testing law, such as the TCCA’s requirement that people convicted on flawed science meet a higher standard than the one actually written in the statute. The Texas House of Representatives has passed a bill intended to resolve these issues,  but it has not yet cleared the Texas Senate. Although the outcome in Gutierrez is welcome, it is not enough to only provide access to post-conviction remedies—courts must also ensure that the remedies themselves are meaningful.