Judicial Scrutiny and Marginalized Rights

We continue our discussion of the deep issues raised in the case of US v. Skrmetti.  Last time we observed the Court wrestling with questions of whether the Tennessee law banning gender dysphoria treatments in minors was a form of sex discrimination.  Later in the argument the Court addressed the question of whether transgender individuals, or some related group, constituted a so-called “suspect classification” and therefore laws purporting to affect that group would be subject to close examination (“Scrutiny”) by the Court.  In this episode we listen, and react to, those arguments as the Court itself did.  Professor Vik Amar returns to join Akhil in this task, and rightly so, since the “brothers in law” have written several recent posts on the deep questions raised by this and other recent cases.  This has resulted in a new unifying theory which they begin to articulate in this episode. CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges from podcast.njsba.com.