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What will occur with the case if the Trump Administration changes its position? The outcome of the case before the Supreme Court may be impacted by the change in administration since the federal government was the one who initiated the challenge.
Written by Adam Liptak
Writing from the nation
The case being heard by the judges on Wednesday is about trans rights and is known as United States v. Skrmetti. This case involves a challenge initiated by the federal government.
However, the government will be under new leadership 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 goes against the Constitution.
Typically, this would indicate that the justices would not need to make a decision, because 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 was fighting for the right to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.
However, there is a complication in this situation. Three families and a doctor initially challenged the Tennessee law, with the Biden administration stepping in to support them. Both the families and the government submitted separate requests for the Supreme Court to review the case, and the justices chose to only accept the government’s petition.
Instead of rejecting the case, the court has the option to approve the companion petition at a later date. They may choose to listen to a different argument or utilize 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 typically didn’t change positions often. For example, the Obama administration maintained the same positions when they took office. However, the first Trump administration took more significant steps by changing positions in four major cases during its first term in the Supreme Court. These cases involved workers’ rights and voting rolls, and the administration succeeded in all four instances.
The Biden administration did not hesitate to change its stance on certain issues. It rejected the strategies used by the Trump administration on five occasions, but only won one of those cases, as reported by Thomas Wolf from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Adam Liptak is a journalist who reports on the Supreme Court and writes a column called Sidebar about legal news. He went to Yale Law School and worked as a lawyer for 14 years before starting at The Times in 2002. You can learn more about Adam Liptak by visiting his profile.
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