The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear arguments in their next term about a Tennessee law that restricts surgeries for transgender minors as well as other treatments like puberty blockers and hormones.

Am I missing something here? This should be the easiest decision in the history of the high court. A 9-0 slam dunk and an early lunch for the justices.

Tennessee’s Attorney General said the state wants to “ensure that potentially irreversible sex-transition procedures are not provided to young people who may not fully grasp the lifelong consequences and risks.”

It speaks volumes about the overall health of our nation that such a thing would require a law. Much less warrant a Supreme Court battle. My only question is—Is eighteen even old enough to grasp the finality and magnitude of such a decision?

As someone who closely follows SCOTUS rulings in cases involving LWOP sentences (life without parole) for young offenders, I’ll concede that at the moment the legal answer is yes. But a growing amount of neuroscientific research and findings say otherwise. Many of these specialists have written amicus briefs for the court contending that the age at which the adolescent brain reaches maturity is actually closer to 25.

Most conservatives would agree that Justice Sotomayor is the most liberal justice on the court. I like her. Always have. And I usually agree with her. Check out what she has to say about the juvenile brain in her scathing dissent of Jones v. Mississippi, a case where the conservative majority ruled 6–3 in upholding the life sentence of a fifteen-year-old.

“. . . First, as any parent knows and as scientific and sociological studies have confirmed, juveniles are less mature and less responsible than adults which often results in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions. Second, juveniles are more vulnerable and susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures and have less control over their own environment. Finally, the character of a juvenile is more transitory than that of an adult…”

These three signature hallmarks of youth are not merely the observations of the court’s most liberal justice in a fiery dissent. They are stare decisis. Established law. The landmark decision in Roper v. Simmons (2005) uses these same characteristics to outlaw the death penalty for minors. Graham v. Florida (2011) relies on them to ban life sentences for non-homicide juvenile offenders. Miller v. Alabama (2012) held that a mandatory life sentence for any juvenile defendant, regardless of the crime, is unconstitutional. In the court’s opinion, this violated 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to imagine anything more cruel and unusual than a doctor performing a double mastectomy on a confused teenage girl . . . A girl who may feel strongly about something today, only to have those feelings fade entirely by the next school year.

Again—

• Less maturity resulting in ill-considered actions and decisions
• More vulnerability and susceptible to outside pressures
• Character that is more transitory than that of an adult

A season of Hello Kitty turns to Roblox turns to varsity soccer. Blond hair and braces in middle school become a dyed black pixie cut and a nose ring in the eleventh grade. Kids go through multiple phases on the road to adulthood. They are works in progress constantly falling for the illusion that they are finished products.

Maybe this is an oversimplification of a more complex issue. I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a teenager in 2024, with all the pressures of high school and social media. And I definitely don’t know what it feels like to be convinced that the opposite sex is trapped in my body.

But I know exactly how it feels to be isolated . . . to feel anxious and awkward and dissatisfied with life, to seek an identity other than white boy Chris; be it musician, drug addict, armed robber, or Malcolm Ivey. I know how it feels to hurt. For years. And what it is like to eventually find peace. To reconcile inner with outer. No surgery required.

America has been failing her children for quite some time. Check out the massive carbon footprint we’re leaving. The leaders we elect. The examples we set. I recently read a study that found that over thirty percent of adolescent girls have considered suicide in their short lives, a rate that rivaled that of combat veterans. This should not be. Not in the greatest country in the history of the world. Saving our kids is the most important issue on the docket these days.

There is no them. Only us.

—July 10, 2024