I’m derelict in calling attention to an excellent amicus brief that two of my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleagues, Eric Kniffin and Mary Rice Hasson, filed in United States v. Skrmetti. Their brief explains that what is really at issue in this case, and in transgender legal disputes more broadly, are “fundamentally different visions of what a human person is.” They quote the “two contrasting visions” that Texas supreme court justice James Blacklock in his concurring opinion in Texas v. Loe:

The first vision—call it the Traditional Vision— holds that a boy is a boy, a girl is a girl, and neither feelings and desires nor drugs and surgery can change this immutable genetic truth, which binds us all. Within the Traditional Vision, human males and females do not “identify” as men and women. We are men and women, irreducibly and inescapably, no matter how we feel. * * *
The second vision—call it the Transgender Vision—holds that we all have a “sex assigned at birth,” which usually corresponds to our physical traits but which may or may not correspond to our inwardly felt or outwardly expressed “gender identity.” It holds that a person’s gender identity is a constitutive part of his or her humanity and that when a person’s biological sex and gender identity diverge, often gender identity should be given priority.”

They continue:

Understanding this dispute in this matter is critical because, as Justice Blacklock noted, “[d]octors have no special expertise in answering moral and political questions.” The power to make such judgments about moral and political questions resides not in medical schools or in courtrooms but in the legislature….
Adopting Justice Blacklock’s terminology, the Traditional Vision is assumed by and informs pediatric medical care, while the Transgender Vision contradicts biology and is inconsistently applied even by those who claim to hold it. It is legitimate for the Tennessee General Assembly to hold the Traditional Vision of the person, to prevent medical interventions that it believes to be harmful in light of that anthropology, and to protect all minors, of both sexes, from those harmful interventions.