Beyond Healthcare: The Supreme Court’s Decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti Prolongs Uncertainty for the Digital Privacy of Transgender People

2,500 Anti-Trans Bills Later: The Supreme Court’s Historic Decision 

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee's ban on gender affirming healthcare for youth. The court got it wrong. Not only does this decision chip away at the fundamental right to bodily autonomy, but the implications of this decision stretch well beyond healthcare–opening the door for states to surveil, regulate, and punish transgender people based on the digital footprints of their daily lives.

As attacks on transgender rights have escalated, so too has a parallel battle over how personal identity is tracked, policed, and protected in digital spaces. Over the last five years, there have been an estimated 2,539 bills introduced in the United States directly targeting transgender people. Year over year, these attacks have continued to ramp up, with 937 anti-trans bills introduced in 2025 alone. Against this backdrop of increased targeting of one of the most marginalized subsets of our community, Skrmetti raises serious questions about both substantive equality and how digital spaces can safeguard or expose our community to more risk. 

--

Legal Discrimination, Historical Animus, and Transgender People as a Suspect Class

The central legal question in United States v. Skrmetti was whether or not Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for youth violates the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating against transgender youth and infringing on parental rights. Notably absent in this case, however, was a determination on the protected class status of transgender people in the United States. It was widely anticipated prior to the case being released that the court would address whether transgender people in the United States met the criteria to be ruled a suspect or quasi-suspect class, which would put the many laws directly targeting them under a higher form of judicial scrutiny. If higher scrutiny applied to trans people, it would require the state to prove that their laws are narrowly tailored for a “compelling government interest”– a higher legal bar that would have made stripping trans rights away much more difficult. Instead, the decision framed the law not as discrimination based on identity, but simply as a regulation of medical treatment—an interpretation that ignores the real-world consequences of denying care based on gender identity.

By upholding Tennessee’s ban, the Supreme Court instead deferred the question, prolonging legal and political uncertainty in physical and digital spaces alike. 

--

What This Means for Digital Privacy

The court’s refusal to rule directly on whether or not to recognize transgender people as a quasi-suspect or suspect class leaves any law directly impacting them, including those enabling targeted surveillance, in a grey zone. Digital surveillance disproportionately affects marginalized groups, and if courts refuse to recognize transgender people as a suspect class, transgender people lose a powerful legal weapon to challenge state surveillance of gender-related behavior, healthcare searches, or social media activity. With anti-trans laws often relying on digital records (e.g., pharmacy logs, medical portals, social media posts) to enforce compliance, the legal grounds for challenging these targeted practices are more important than ever. 

Unfortunately, the threat of targeted digital surveillance of transgender people is undeniable. In February, the Department of Homeland Security removed rules barring the surveillance of people on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation alone. This erodes the digital privacy of LGBTQ+ people, which is especially concerning for transgender people who are currently subject to escalating legal hostility in various states. 

Erasure of LGBTQ+ perspectives in online spaces is also a growing concern. If states are allowed to criminalize gender-affirming care, many online platforms could be driven to comply with state compelled content takedowns related to gender identity or trans issues. Beyond this, the politicization of LGBTQ+ lives could create a chilling effect on the willingness of these platforms to embrace our content, incentivizing them to comply in advance and proactively censor and suppress LGBTQ+ voices to avoid being targeted. This threatens to undermine the proven usefulness of online spaces to foster LGBTQ+ community, and fundamentally diminishes the transgender community’s freedom of speech. 

--

What Happens Next Matters For All of Us

We stand at a crossroads, not just for transgender youth, but for the future of constitutional privacy and civil liberties in an increasingly digital world. The court’s decision in Skrmetti allows states, for now, to continue to legislate away bodily autonomy, target marginalized identities, and weaponize digital surveillance to enforce discriminatory agendas. The outcome of this case will ripple far beyond Tennessee. It has set the tone for how trans rights are treated under Equal Protection, how deeply the government can intrude into private medical and familial decisions, and whether the law will meaningfully protect the privacy and dignity of one of the most targeted groups in America.

These legal questions aren’t academic alone, they either affirm or deny the recognition of trans people’s full humanity in the face of a relentless legislative and cultural onslaught. In a world where every click, search, and digital trace can become evidence of nonconformity, that recognition is not only constitutionally mandated, it’s ethically essential. Now more than ever, we must understand that the fight for trans rights is also the fight for privacy, autonomy, and equal protection – for all of us.