MSNBC host Joy Reid argued on Wednesday that preventing children from accessing life-altering gender transition medical procedures echoes Nazi Germany.
Reid argued that Republicans had "exploited" concerns about minors that identify as transgender during the 2024 election, and that focusing on such a small population "would be the numerical equivalent of the Republican Party targeting the entire city of Phoenix, Arizona, population 1.65 million, because they don’t like the desert landscape. In fact, there are more kids that have been exposed to gun violence, estimated at 3 million, than there are transgender Americans of all ages in total.
The MSNBC host went on to cite Nazi Germany, suggesting that opponents of trans medical procedures for minors echo the same hatred.
"Targeting trans people isn’t new," she said. "It is an age-old tradition which Nazi Germany did with brutally violent ends in the 1930s. While the Supreme Court refuses to do anything about weapons of war in schools, today they seemed inclined to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. While the decision is not expected for months, a majority of the justices parroted a string of debunked talking points, all under the guise of protecting the kids, just not every kid."
The Supreme Court this week heard arguments in the United States v. Skrmetti case, which centers on a Tennessee law that bans gender-transition medical procedures for minors. The law, passed in March 2023, also takes aim at health care providers in Tennessee who continue to provide gender-transition treatments to transgender minors, opening them up to fines, lawsuits and other liability.
While it appears a majority of the Supreme Court justices are ready to uphold the Tennessee law, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared the state law to past laws that banned interracial marriage.
"Interesting to me that you mentioned precedent, because some of these questions about sort of who decides and the concerns and legislative prerogatives, etc., sound very familiar to me," Jackson said. "They sound in the same kinds of arguments that were made back in the day—50s, 60s—with respect to racial classifications and inconsistencies. I'm thinking in particular about Loving v. Virginia, and I'm wondering whether you thought about the parallels, because I see one as to how this statute operates and how the anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia operated."