Ketanji Brown Jackson's New Warning to Supreme Court
Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned that her conservative colleagues failed to show "reason and restraint" by allowing Idaho's transgender youth health care ban to be enforced during an appeal.The Supreme Court's conservative majority on Monday granted a request from Idaho officials to allow enforcement of a near-total ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth while the case works its way through the courts.
The ban had previously been temporarily blocked by a lower court.The decision does not apply to the two teenage transgender girls whose families filed a lawsuit over the ban.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in his concurring opinion that "the plaintiffs face no harm from the partial stay," while arguing that blocking the ban could prevent "Idaho from executing any aspect of its law for years."Jackson and fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan objected to the decision.
In her dissenting opinion, Jackson argued that the court had failed to show "respect for lower court judges" and that Idaho had not shown that blocking the ban during the appeal would cause the state "irreversible injury.""We do not have to address every high-profile case percolating in lower courts, and there are usually many good reasons not to do so," Jackson wrote. "Few applicants can meet our threshold requirement of 'an exceptional need for immediate relief,' by showing that they will suffer not just substantial harm but an 'irreversible injury.'"Jackson went on to argue that Idaho had already conceded that the new law, which was signed last year by Republican Governor Brad Little, was "likely unconstitutional, at least as applied to the plaintiffs." The Supreme Court's majority decision on Monday did not address whether or not the law was constitutional."The State takes this litigating position while defending a statute that regulates access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender children," Jackson wrote. "That is a serious and consequential.
