The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a high-profile case involving state restrictions on transgender care for minors, including various medical treatments and surgeries to alter one's sexual identity.

At one point in the proceedings, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor gallingly downplayed the serious risks youths face with gender transitioning by noting that even "taking aspirin" comes with inherent risks, Mediaite reported in an op-ed.

The cavalier comparison of taking an ordinary over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pill with doctor-prescribed hormone therapies, irreversible puberty blockers, and sex change operations exposed the left-leaning jurist as being either deeply dishonest or unknowledgeable about the matter before the court.

Tennessee banned transgender treatments for minors

In 2023, Tennessee passed a law known as SB1 that prohibits healthcare providers in the state from knowingly providing transgender transitioning care to minors, regardless of whether those minors and/or their parents consent to the treatments and procedures.

Critics of the law argued that it violated the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in that it discriminated against individuals based on sex.

The case, known as U.S. v. Skrmetti, was centered on not just whether the law violated the 14th Amendment but also revolved around what level of scrutiny courts should apply when considering that question.

"Every medical treatment has a risk -- even taking aspirin"

During the arguments, per Mediaite, Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Price spoke of the "often irreversible and life-altering consequences" of transgender care for minors and pointed to studies in Europe which found that the serious risks of such care typically far outweighed any possible benefits that might be received.

Price said that the issue was "a pure exercise of weighing benefits versus risk. And the question of how many minors have to have their bodies irreparably harmed for unproven benefits is one that is best left to the legislature."

Enter Justice Sotomayor, who interjected and said, "I’m sorry, counselor, every medical treatment has a risk -- even taking aspirin. There is always going to be a percentage of the population under any medical treatment that’s going to suffer a harm."

"So the question in my mind is not: Do policymakers decide whether one person’s life is more valuable than the millions of others who get relief from this treatment?" she continued. "The question is: Can you stop one sex from the other, one person of one sex, from another sex from receiving that benefit?"

As an example, Sotomayor posited, "So if the medical condition is unwanted hair by a nine-year-old boy who can receive estrogen for that, because at nine years old, if he has hair, he gets laughed at, and picked on, and his puberty is coming in too early. But a girl who has unwanted hair says or wants unwanted, has unwanted breasts, or a boy at that age can get that drug, but the other can’t."

"That’s the sex-based difference," she added. "It’s not the med- -- the medical condition is the same, but you’re saying one sex is getting it and the other is not."

"Obfuscation was her aim"

The Mediaite op-ed accused Justice Sotomayor of being "dishonest" in her comparison of the dangers of taking aspirin with those of transgender treatments for minors, in that the two things were vastly different and far from comparable.

"All medical treatment comes with some risks, yes. But taking an anti-inflammatory and permanently altering children’s bodies don’t come with the same kind or the same chance of harm to the patient," the op-ed concluded. "It’s baffling that Sotomayor would think to make such a comparison; unless, of course, obfuscation was her aim."