Continuing SCOTUS Wrap Up –Part 3 June 18, 2025
After we took a break to discuss the overwhelming June 10, 2025 Oklahoma special election victory of Amanda Clinton as well as the antics of extremist GOP Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), we’re heading right back to 1 First Street, NE in our nation’s capital. Remember, that’s the home of SCOTUS– the Supreme Court of the United States. And there is good news to report in a recently-decided case. On June 12, 2025, in a unanimous decision, students with disabilities won a “big one.” In the case of “A.J.T v. Osseo Area Schools, Independent School Dist. No. 279,” the High Court held that students with disabilities do not need to prove “bad faith or gross misjudgment” to pursue discrimination cases. In their opinion, SCOTUS reversed the U.S. 8th Circuit Federal Court’s ruling. The lower court ruling held that students in cases involving education who suffered from disabilities had to meet a higher legal standard than those involving any other disability case.
https://wwwaclu.org/press-releases/aclu-celebrates-supreme-court-decision-in-a-j-t-v-osseo-area-schools
This case concerned a teenage student, Ava Tharpe, who suffered from a rare form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. Ava’s seizures were so frequent in the morning that she couldn’t attend school before noon. When Ava previously lived in Tennessee, her school day was shifted so it started in the afternoon and ended with home instruction in the evening. When the family moved to Minnesota, where she is currently enrolled, her school system refused to provide the same adjustment. Because of the MN’s school refusal to make that same adjustment, Ava received only 4.25 hours of instruction a day, about 2/3 of what nondisabled students receive, according to USA Today.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/12/supreme-court-decision-student-disability-discrimination-case/83776317007/
Prior to this decision, hundreds of lower federal court decisions were litigated under a previous 1982 federal circuit court decision that required school officials to have acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment” before disabled plaintiffs in educational cases could go forward with their cases. As a result, disabled plaintiffs in educational suits mainly lost such cases, because this “bad faith/gross misjudgment” standard created a “nearly insurmountable barrier” for children and their families, according to disability rights experts.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/12/supreme-court-decision-student-disability-discrimination-case/83776317007/
Chief Justice Roberts (CJ) wrote this decision, rightfully saying that the disabled student’s family must only demonstrate that the school showed “deliberate indifference,” rather than the way higher standard of “bad faith or gross misjudgment.”https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/12/supreme-court-decision-student-disability-discrimination-case/83776317007/
Any attorney will tell you that the standard a plaintiff has to prove in court may make the absolute difference in allowing his/her case to proceed or having it thrown out. SCOTUS’ decision was, IMHO, the correct one.
Always remember that this Supreme Court is far from a liberal one. Yes, they just aided students with disabilities. Still, when transgender youths are involved, a group that the GOP Trump administration is quite hostile to and on which Donald campaigned against in 2024, the conservative 6-3 margin, with three Trump appointees in the majority, gave his administration a victory. Five years ago, SCOTUS issued a decision that protected transgender people from workplace discrimination. However, on June 18, 2025, in an opinion written by CJ Roberts, SCOTUS upheld a Tennessee law that prohibits some medical treatment for transgender youths. In 2023, TN enacted a law that prohibited medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication, offering hormone therapy or performing surgery to treat the psychological distress caused by incongruence between experienced gender and the gender that was assigned at birth. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/18/us/supreme-court-transgender-care#supreme-court-tennessee-transgender-care-minors
A doctor and three families sued to challenge the TN law. They said it discriminated based on both sex and transgender status in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. They noted that TN’s law specified that those prohibited treatments were allowed when undertaken for reasons other than gender transition care. And again, elections have consequences. The Biden administration had intervened on the side of the doctor and the three families. When Trump took office, according to the NY Times, he issued an executive order directing agencies to curtail such care for youths under age 19. In February, 2025, Trump’s administration formally reversed the government’s prior position under Biden and urged the Justices to back TN’s law in this case, “United States v. Skrmetti”. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/18/us/supreme-court-transgender-care#supreme-court-tennessee-transgender-care-minors
Although major medical associations supported the prohibited treatments as crucial to alleviating the psychological distress of many transgender youths, TN’s brief argued that scientific uncertainty meant that legislatures, rather than courts, according to the Times, should decide what treatments minors can receive in such cases. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/18/us/supreme-court-transgender-care#supreme-court-tennessee-transgender-care-minors
CJ Roberts’ majority opinion backed TN. In deciding this case, SCOTUS upheld TN’s law under the “rational basis” standard for sustaining legislation, typically reserved for economic regulations, not classifications of race, gender, and national origin which require the more “heightened scrutiny” standard. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-deals-another-major-blow-to-transgender-rights_n_683767fee4b05a60acead47b?k2=&utm_source=bu…
Roberts agreed that the “voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound.” However, as stated in the Times, Roberts said these questions, which “raise fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field, should be resolved by the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.”https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/18/us/supreme-court-transgender-care#supreme-court-tennessee-transgender-care-minors Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench. Justices usually read dissents from the bench only when they feel strongly that the majority has erred and that the public should understand that. Again, IMHO, this case demonstrates that the Roberts Court will usually not go out of its way to help minorities challenging majorities and will, most of the time, not give them much protection.Presently, according to National Public Radio (NPR), 25 states already have enacted laws banning gender-affirming care for minors. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5432747/supreme-court-remaining-cases
