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A new poll shows that most Americans approve of recent Supreme Court rulings allowing states to ban gender-transition treatment for minors, parents to opt out of LGBTQ story time for their children and authorities to require age verification for accessing adult websites.
In the SCOTUSPoll survey, 64% of respondents said states should be able to ban gender-transition medical treatment for youths, 77% said schools should give parents an opt-out option if they have religious objections to their children attending LGBTQ story time and 80% said age verification measures to access sexually explicit websites are a good idea. The survey was conducted before the court issued its rulings.
Those three rulings were among the major disputes considered during the conservative-led high court’s 2024-2025 term — each generating a 6-3 decision among the ideologically divided justices.
The gender-transition medical treatment case focused on Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers for minors seeking to change gender. Families with transgender children had challenged the ban, saying it was discriminatory on the basis of sex.
The court’s conservative majority sided with Tennessee, saying the state’s law did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and was not discriminatory.
In the LGBTQ story time case, parents of various faiths challenged a Maryland county school district that had denied them a chance to opt out their children. The lessons were taught to kindergarteners through fifth-graders.
The court’s majority ruled that schools must give parents an opt-out option under the First Amendment so not to trample religious rights, reasoning that public school is a benefit for everyone.
And the age-verification dispute arose from Texas, which enacted a requirement for adult websites to make users input identification information to verify their age and block access to minors. A trade group for the adult entertainment industry challenged the law, arguing that it violated the First Amendment.
The court sided with Texas, reasoning that states have authority to protect minors without running afoul of the First Amendment.
The SCOTUSPoll project did not directly poll one major ruling by the court this term — the issue of district court judges blocking President Trump’s policies nationwide by issuing universal injunctions.
The dispute came to the court after a lower court judge blocked Mr. Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship, where a child born on U.S. soil is given U.S. citizenship even if the child’s parents are not legally in the country.
The justices did not consider the constitutionality of the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, only whether district court judges can issue rulings that extend beyond the parties before them. The high court’s 6-3 ruling essentially bars lower courts from issuing universal injunctions.
In the SCOTUSPoll survey, 64% of respondents said the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship, in disagreement with the Trump policy.
The survey’s data were collected by researchers at the University of Texas, Harvard University and Stanford University. The poll was conducted online April 10-16 among 2,201 U.S. adults by YouGov.org. No margin of error was given.
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