"The court really abdicated its responsibility to protect a vulnerable group," she added. In a rare dissent, read from the bench, Justice Sonia Sotomayor echoed that sentiment. Because the Tennessee law explicitly classifies its ban on the basis of sex and transgender status, she said, both the constitution and precedent require that the court subject the law to a higher level of scrutiny. Instead, she said, the majority "contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise," retreating from meaningful judicial review "exactly when it matters most." To make her point, Sotomayor noted that judicial scrutiny has long played an essential role in guarding against legislative efforts to impose the state's view on how people of a particular race or sex should live, or look or act. Pointing to what she called a "hauntingly familiar passage" in Virginia's 1967 brief defending its ban on interracial marriage, Sotomayor noted that the court did not "defer to the wisdom of the state legislature." Indeed, the court's 1967 landmark ruling struck down the ban on interracial marriage. Contrary to that decision, she said that the court now abandons children and their families to "political whims," adding, "In sadness, I dissent." Joining her in full was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Elena Kagan partially joined. She too would have required a higher level of scrutiny, but she would have stopped there. Given the extensive, and disputed evidence presented in the lower courts, she said, the court should have sent the case back down to determine whether the state law was based on stereotypes and prejudices or legitimate state interests. While the court's majority opinion gave states broad powers to ban or regulate transgender medical care for minors, it left unresolved a number of questions that very likely will reach the Supreme Court next term. Among them is a challenge to the Trump administration's ban on transgender people in the military, and a challenge to the administration's policy denying passports for transgender individuals, unless they list as their gender as their sex at birth. , The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed to the states control over whether young people should have access to treatments for gender transition, preserving a patchwork of rules that has emerged, The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld laws in roughly half the states that ban gender affirming medical care for transgender minors. The vote was 6-3, along ideological lines. The case was .