Supreme Court won’t hear case involving transgender rights

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court is declining to wade into a case involving transgender rights and leaving in place a lower court decision against a Catholic hospital that wouldn’t allow a transgender man to have a hysterectomy there. The high court turned away the case Monday without comment, as is typical. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have heard the case. Mercy San Juan Medical Center near Sacramento declined to allow the procedure to be performed at its facility saying it was an “elective sterilization” that violated the hospital’s ethical and religious obligations. The patient, Evan Minton, got the surgery three days later at a different hospital. He sued under a California law that bars discrimination.