A recent United States Supreme Court decision allowing Tennessee to ban gender-affirming care to transgender minors brought a sharp dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and she cited a BC Law alumnus to help make her argument.
In the United States v. Skrmetti case, SCOTUS handed down a 6-3 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruling that Tennessee did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with its law that bans the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children to treat gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a condition in which a person is distressed by discordance between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. Such medical treatments, however, are allowed by the state when used to help a child conform their gender identity to the sex assigned at birth and will remain unaffected by the ruling.
Sotomayor wrote a strong dissent to the opinion, which was joined in full by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and in part by Justice Elena Kagan. Sotomayor delivered the dissent from the bench, an uncommon occurrence which is traditionally reserved by the Court’s justices to signal exceptional displeasure with a decision.
As part of that dissent, Sotomayor, cited an article co-authored by Kevin M. Barry ’00. The article, “A Bare Desire to Harm: Transgender People and the Equal Protection Clause,” was referenced by Sotomayor to help give background to patterns of discrimination transgender people have faced in the US. The article points out how this discrimination has extended to US laws such as the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act, which exclude transgender people from their protections, as Sotomayor wrote.
Barry, who also previously served as executive editor of the Boston College Law Review, has worked on issues of discrimination in law throughout his academic career. He was previously featured in BC Law Magazine after co-authoring an amicus brief that contributed to a 2017 Pennsylvania district court ruling allowing transgender people to seek relief from discrimination under the ADA.
Barry currently teaches administrative law and disability law at Quinnipiac University’s School of Law and is the co-director of its civil justice clinic.