by Shawn Fleetwood at the Federalist
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has never been shy about telling it like it is in his Supreme Court opinions. So, it came as little surprise when he demolished the so-called “expert class” in the high court’s Wednesday opinion in U.S. v. Skrmetti.
In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS deemed a Tennessee law prohibiting the surgical and chemical castration of minors does not violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The decision came along ideological lines, with all six Republican appointees voting in the affirmative and all three Democrat appointees dissenting.
While signing onto Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in the case, Thomas also authored a separate concurring opinion “to address some additional arguments made in defense of Tennessee’s law.” It was here that the Court’s most senior justice shattered attempts by plaintiffs — which included the Biden administration — to “accord outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise.”
Thomas noted that the Biden administration “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,” with the implication being “that courts should defer to so-called expert consensus.” However, the George H.W. Bush appointee argued, “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,…
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