For Tennessee’s Transgender Families, Supreme Court Ruling Was Bitter, but Expected

Politics|For Tennessee’s Transgender Families, the Court Ruling Was Bitter, but Expected

There had been cause for joy this June. There were events timed with Pride Month, when families and friends gathered with rainbow tattoos and flags for the annual celebration of L.G.B.T.Q. life. And there was an unexpected legal victory when a federal judge extended a temporary injunction on a federal policy requiring passports to reflect the sex on a person’s original birth certificate.

Then on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on transition treatment for transgender youth, dealing a bitter setback to their families and reviving fear about other limits that may come for L.G.B.T.Q. people in the state.

For many transgender people, children and their families in Tennessee, it was not necessarily an unexpected outcome given the vitriol they have faced in recent years.

The state has been at the forefront of a rollback on L.G.B.T.Q. rights as its General Assembly, with an entrenched Republican supermajority, has barred changes to gender identification on driver’s licenses, limited where drag shows can take place and prevented transgender students from using public school bathrooms that fit their identities.

“I’m not surprised” at the ruling, said Eli Givens, who at 18 had testified against the ban. “I really want to be. Ever since I started all of this in 2023, it’s been whiplash every single day. There’s just always a new decision, someone saying something about the community.”

Receiving treatment as a teenager “was a new chance at life for me,” Mx. Givens, 20, added. “I could savor things in a way I never could before. Everything kind of made sense and fell into place.”