Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was loudly booed while slamming health care for trans children outside the Supreme Court.
Greene went on the attack Wednesday at the court as it was hearing arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case involving a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
The congresswoman spoke about children taking puberty blockers, calling them “hormones or chemical castration pills,” according to footage from the event posted on X by reporter Talia Jane.
She added that children were taking the pills to “destroy their bodies before they’re ever old enough to vote, join the military, ever old enough to even be an adult.”
She also insisted those advocating for trans rights were “demons” under the direct orders of “Satan.”
“What you’re hearing is the outcry from the demons and those that worship evil that are abusing our children, brainwashing our children to believe the lies that come directly from Satan,” she added as the boos continued, drowning out many of her words.
Greene insisted that “God created male and female in his image, he created us.”
She was booed by protesters attending the “Freedom to Be Ourselves” rally backing trans rights outside the court.
The crowd was “roughly” four to one “pro-trans rights vs anti,” Jane noted, leaving Greene and her fellow anti-trans group in the minority.
Greene is part of a narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which may attempt to restrict trans rights nationwhide during President-elect Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House.
Sarah McBride of Delaware, a Democrat and the first transgender person elected to Congress, has become a target of Republicans such as Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina who argue that her use of restrooms in the Capitol would be equivalent to assault.
In the Supreme Court on Wednesday, justices in the conservative majority on the highest court in the land indicated that they would probably back the Tennessee ban to limit the rights of transgender people.
The Republicans are targeting a group of people making up just 1.6 percent of U.S. adults, according to the Pew Research Center.
The center found in 2022 that 64 percent of Americans support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination when it comes to jobs, housing, as well as in public spaces such as stores and restaurants.
Arguing in front of the Supreme Court Wednesday was ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, the first openly trans lawyer to do appear in front of the high court.
Strangio insisted at the hearing that the Tennessee ban was removing the “only treatment that relieved years of suffering” for many trans youth.
Marjorie Taylor Greene loudly booed, and apparently thrown by the boos, while claiming children are taking puberty blockers “before they’re old enough to join the military, before they’re ever old enough to…be an adult.” pic.twitter.com/C7Eb1GBIiW
— Talia Jane ❤️🔥 (@taliaotg) December 4, 2024
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the ban doesn’t adhere to Tennessee’s rules on puberty blockers for those who aren’t trans.
“The law restricts medical care only when provided to induce physical effects inconsistent with birth sex,” she argued. “Someone assigned female at birth can’t receive medication to live as a male, but someone assigned male can. If you change the individual sex, it changes the result. That’s a facial sex classification, full stop, and a law like that can’t stand on bare rationality.”
Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the case was different from other rulings on sex discrimination because of the medical consequences.
Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice said that there “has to be a medical purpose for these drugs.” He went on to say that the plaintiffs had been “conflating different medical purposes.”
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan noted that the case was “imbued with sex” before going on to say, “You might have reasons for thinking that it’s an appropriate regulation, and those reasons should be tested and respect given to them, but it’s a dodge to say that this is not based on sex [and that] it’s based on medical purpose when the medical purpose is utterly and entirely about sex.”
