What Would We Do Without Experts?
- La Petite Sirène
- Jun 26
- 4 min read
What Would We Do Without Experts?
The Supreme Court will let the people decide.
By James Freeman
18 juin 2025
The question in today’s headline has often been asked by this column with a sarcastic chuckle, though sometimes it’s been hard to find the humor in an age afflicted by the abuse of academic credentials for political ends. It certainly wasn’t funny during the Covid panic when medical authority was used by government officials to silence dissent, restrict human liberty and impose enormous and unnecessary burdens on America’s children. But today one has to be feeling a little better about the ability of a free people to make democratic choices without having to bow before an ideological agenda dressed up as scientific consensus.
Last December, while it remained unclear who was running the U.S. Government, the nominal Biden administration attempted one last effort to use the court system to take power over a controversial question away from voters. Specifically the government attempted to persuade the Supreme Court to block states from deciding whether sex-transition treatments can be administered to minor children. Team Biden defended such practices with a dubious appeal to expert authority, as if it was settled science that such treatments are appropriate and necessary. Thank goodness the Supreme Court didn’t buy this last heaping helping of Biden-era malarkey.
In a 6-3 decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court let stand a Tennessee law known as SB1 that restricts sex transition treatments on minors.
The opinion of the Court notes that the trendy treatments have already sparked a wave of second thoughts throughout the world of medicine:
… health authorities in a number of European countries have raised significant concerns regarding the potential harms associated with using puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender minors. In 2020, Finland’s Council for Choices in Health Care found that “gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice” and that “the reliability of the existing studies” is “highly uncertain.”… That same year, England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published reports finding that the evidence for using puberty blockers to treat transgender adolescents is of “very low certainty” and that the long-term risks associated with using hormones to treat adolescents with gender dysphoria are “largely unknown.”… In 2022, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare found that “the evidence on treatment efficacy and safety is still insufficient and inconclusive” and that the “risks” of puberty blockers and hormones “currently outweigh the possible benefits.”… And in 2023, the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board concluded that the “research-based knowledge” for hormonal sex transition treatments for minors is “insufficient,” while the “long-term effects are little known.
Justice Clarence Thomas writes in a concurring opinion about the Biden administration’s attempt to override democratic political choices:
The Court rightly rejects efforts by the United States and the private plaintiffs to accord outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise. The United States asserted that “the medical community and the nation’s leading hospitals overwhelmingly agree” with the Government’s position that the treatments outlawed by SB1 can be medically necessary… The implication of these arguments is that courts should defer to so-called expert consensus.
There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the “wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.” FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc... Second, contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts’ view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves. Fourth, there are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.
Taken together, this case serves as a useful reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts, and that courts may not “sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.” Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri… By correctly concluding that SB1 warrants the “paradigm of judicial restraint,” Beach Communications… the Court reserves to the people of Tennessee the right to decide for themselves.
Amen to that. And Justice Thomas wasn’t done:
The views of self-proclaimed experts do not “shed light on the meaning of the Constitution.” Dobbs… Thus, whether “major medical organizations” agree
with the result of Tennessee’s democratic process is irrelevant… To hold otherwise would permit elite sentiment to distort and stifle democratic debate under the guise of scientific judgment, and would reduce judges to mere “spectators … in construing our Constitution.”
Just a few Terms ago, this Court acknowledged the importance of reserving to the democratic process the right to decide controversial medical questions. In Dobbs, the respondents sought to invoke the authority of “overwhelming medical consensus” and “numerous major medical organizations” to dispatch with Mississippi’s asserted interest in minimizing pain for the unborn… The Court pointedly rejected the notion that a consensus among popular expert groups could remove “the mitigation of fetal pain” from the “legitimate interests” of the people…
When legislation does not cross constitutional lines, States must have leeway to effect the judgment of their citizens—no matter whether experts disagree. And, when this Court has nonetheless given exalted status to expert opinion, it has been to our detriment: Past deference to expertise provided the theory of eugenics “added legitimacy and considerable momentum,” with “[t]his Court thr[owing] its prestige behind the eugenics movement in its 1927 decision upholding the constitutionality of Virginia’s forced-sterilization law.” Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. and Ky., Inc... Fortunately, we do not repeat
that mistake today.
Justice Thomas adds:
Before this Court, the United States asserted that “overwhelming evidence” supports the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for treating pediatric gender dysphoria, and that this view represents “the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.”… These claims are untenable… The treatments at issue are subject to a rapidly evolving debate that demonstrates a lack of medical consensus over their risks and benefits… It is undisputed… that these treatments carry risks. Research suggests that, aside from interrupting a child’s normal pubertal development, puberty blockers may lead to decreased bone density and impacts on brain development.
What would we do without the right to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts?
Comments