In United States v. Skrmetti (2025), the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's restrictions on specified medical treatments for minors. The Court concluded that the challenged law did not classify on the basis of sex for equal-protection purposes and reviewed it under rational-basis review. That holding addresses the classification and medical regulation before the Court; it did not erase Lawrence, Obergefell, or Bostock. Suppose a state refuses to recognize a lawful same-sex marriage. Obergefell directly governs. A covered private employer's discriminatory firing begins with Title VII. A state medical rule requires analysis of its text, operation, affected group, and current precedent, and it may also generate speech, free-exercise, parental-rights, or statutory claims. For CLEP purposes, resist treating "LGBTQ+ rights" as one test. Identify whether the facts concern intimacy, marriage, government classification, medical regulation, or covered employment, then match the dispute to the authority that actually reaches it.

source matching changes the answer. A county clerk refusing a marriage license implicates the constitutional marriage rule. A covered corporation firing a transgender worker triggers Title VII even though the employer is private. A state restriction on specified medical treatment for minors requires analysis of the classification and the current Skrmetti rule. A public program's sex classification begins with the constitutional standard for that classification, while a private organization's policy requires a statute or another source that reaches it. On a CLEP item, label the actor, conduct, classification, and source before selecting a test. That prevents Bostock's employment holding, Skrmetti's medical-regulation holding, or the marriage and intimacy precedents from becoming a universal formula. It also prevents a constitutional decision about government from being mistaken for a rule directly binding every private association or relationship.

Video lesson: Equal Protection: Crash Course Government and Politics #29