The Supreme Court’s new term

Two weeks ago—as on every Tuesday after the first Monday in October—the Supreme Court began its new term. As the federal courts have become increasingly active in the social and economic issues of our day, Supreme Court decisions are often felt nationwide. This term is no exception. The high court will decide, among other things, whether states may forbid gender transition drugs and surgeries for minors and require age verification before users access porn websites. Here are three important cases to watch.

Skrmetti v. United States

Responding to the evidence that gender transition drugs and surgeries on minors are an experimental practice where the risks—lifelong sterility, loss of bone density, increased risk of heart disease, to name just a few—wildly outweigh the possible benefits, The state of Tennessee enacted a commonsense law that protects minors from chemical and surgical gender transition interventions. Throughout the United States, there has been a startling increase in the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria—from just 2017 to 2021, the number of diagnoses nearly tripled. At the same time, the Biden-Harris administration, and many segments of the American medical community, have been pushing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries without any age limits. This transition-first-ask-questions-later policy imposes enormous harm on America’s youth. Meanwhile, because these interventions are experimental and the supposed benefits of transition drugs and surgeries are unproven, the European countries that pioneered transition treatments are reversing course, pulling back on providing them to minors.

Tennessee and 25 other states have followed suit. Yet the Biden-Harris administration insists that children should be given these experimental and life-altering drugs. That’s insane. To push a gender ideology on our most vulnerable children—when the data shows that most prepubertal children who do not receive gender transition treatment eventually become comfortable in their God-given bodies—is unconscionable. And the Biden-Harris administration is wrong that the Constitution requires it. Tennessee’s law does not discriminate based on sex or gender but rather prohibits a specific medical treatment. Protecting minors from harm is the bread-and-butter function of the state police power.

Free Speech Coalition v. Texas

Here, the state of Texas sought to minimize the harm caused by early exposure to pornography. Given the ubiquity of smartphones, the average age a child sees pornography is 11. More than 70 percent of American teens have viewed pornography. Texas thus required commercial porn websites to verify that their customers were at least 18—through a government-issued ID, facial recognition, or online profile. The porn industry objected and filed suit saying that the age-verification requirement burdens the free speech rights of their adult consumers.

There’s no question that states can protect minors from smut—even if adults might have a First Amendment right to such content. But Supreme Court precedent is unclear as to what sort of burden on adult access is permissible. Several federal courts have struck down age-verification laws, finding they impose too great a burden on adult access. But Texas is right that its ability to protect minors from harmful online content is meaningless if it can’t require the porn industry to verify that its users are adults.

San Francisco v. EPA

In a battle that pits left-wing ideology against commonsense governance, the city of San Francisco has sued the Environmental Protection Agency for its interpretation of the Clean Water Act. That statute provides safe harbor permits for municipalities in certain circumstances—think North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. In such circumstances, sewer systems often become overloaded and spill some of their contents into nearby bodies of water. The problem, says San Francisco, is that the EPA’s safe-harbor permits don’t provide any sort of regulatory target. Rather, the permits say a violation occurs if the overflow is a contributing factor to the noncompliance of a water quality standard in the receiving body of water. For San Francisco, the receiving body of water is the Pacific Ocean. The city argues—with some force—that it has limited control over the cleanliness of the ocean. But showing the partisan nature of environmental regulation, the state of California has jumped in on the side of the EPA. They should lose. The text of the Clean Water Act doesn’t allow regulators to impose liability on cities and counties that have little to no control over the cleanliness of receiving waters.

As the Supreme Court takes the bench again this year, it is being attacked by those who question its legitimacy. But the court has an important role to play—it is a liberty-preserving check against the overreach of the other two branches of the federal government. Let’s remember to pray for the court and for God to grant wisdom, guidance, and protection to the justices.