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If the Trump Administration changes its stance on the case, it could impact the outcome of the case before the Supreme Court since the federal government is the one who originally brought the challenge.
Written by Adam Liptak
Writing from the capital
The case being heard by the judges on Wednesday involves trans rights and is known as United States v. Skrmetti, indicating that it was initiated by the federal government as a challenge.
However, the government’s leadership will shift next month, and it is highly likely that the Trump administration will reject the Biden administration’s claim that a Tennessee law restricting certain medical treatments for transgender minors is unconstitutional.
Typically, this would indicate that there would be no further decisions for the judges to make, since both parties would agree that the law is constitutional.
In 2017, a similar situation occurred when President-elect Donald J. Trump assumed office. In March of that year, the Supreme Court decided to drop a case involving the rights of transgender students after the Trump administration changed its stance. The case involved a transgender boy in Virginia who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.
However, there is a complication in this situation. The Tennessee law was first contested by three families and a doctor, with the Biden administration stepping in to support them. Both the families and the government submitted their own requests for the Supreme Court to review the case, but only the government’s petition was accepted by the justices.
Instead of rejecting the case, the court has the option to approve the companion petition at a later time. The court may choose to listen to a different argument or use the one presented on Wednesday by Chase Strangio from the ACLU and Elizabeth B. Prelogar from the U.S. solicitor general’s office, who is representing the Biden administration.
In the past, new administrations would rarely change their positions on issues. The Obama administration, for example, did not change any positions when they took office. However, the first Trump administration was more daring in this regard. They changed positions in four important cases during their first full term in the Supreme Court, including cases related to workers’ rights and voting rolls, and they were successful in all four instances.
The Biden administration did not hesitate to change its stance on various issues. They rejected the methods used by the previous Trump administration on five occasions, and ended up losing four of those cases based on information gathered by Thomas Wolf from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Adam Liptak writes for The New York Times about legal news and the Supreme Court. He graduated from Yale Law School and worked as a lawyer for 14 years before starting at The Times in 2002.
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