The U.S. Department of Justice, under the leadership of President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, has just pulled out of a controversial U.S. Supreme Court case. 

This is a complete reversal, according to CNN, from the position taken by former President Joe Biden's DOJ, which was led by former Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The case has to do with a law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors. Trump has, in the past, referred to such ideas as "transgender craziness," so the move has not come as a surprise.

It is one of the most high-profile cases of this kind that the Supreme Court has heard in years.

Here's what's going:

The law at issue is from Tennessee.

U.S. News reports:

Tennessee's law bars medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria, the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.

After it was passed, the law was challenged legally. At the lower court level, the law was upheld, but the case did not stop there.

Instead, it continued up the court system, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments int he case back on Dec. 4, 2024. Along the way, the Biden administration got involved, siding with those who opposed the law.

The opponents argued that the law ought to be struck down as it allegedly violated the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority, during oral arguments, seemed to suggest that it was leaning towards upholding the law, but no decision in the case has been made.

It's constitutional

Now, the Trump administration's DOJ is pulling out the case, after insisting that Tennessee's ban on "gender-affirming care for minors" is constitutional.

In a recent filing, Trump's DOJ told the Supreme Court:

The department has now determined that SB1 does not deny equal protection on account of sex or any other characteristic. Accordingly, the new administration would not have intervened to challenge SB1 – let alone sought this court’s review of the court of appeals’ decision reversing the preliminary injunction against SB1.

The big question is how the case is going to proceed from here. The answer is not immediately clear.

The decision will ultimately be made by the Supreme Court.

Some are urging it to decide the case anyway, despite the Trump administration's withdrawal.