The Right to Seek Joy

Authors

• Tyler Rose Clemons, St. John's University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

Publication Date

2026

Volume

61

First Page

193

Abstract

Within the past three years, roughly half of American states have restricted access to gender-affirming medical treatment for children. In this article, I argue that these bans violate transgender children’s right to liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. I do so by excavating the Framers’ understanding of liberty as the right to seek joy. Rooted in the philosophies of John Locke and Epicurus, the Framers understood liberty as the right to make important life decisions according to one’s subjective preferences without undue interference from the government. Based on this understanding, I develop a new framework for substantive due process jurisprudence according to which more process becomes “due” as government action impinges upon more natural and necessary liberty interests. Finally, I apply this framework to gender-affirming care bans, concluding that standard legislative and judicial procedures cannot justify the near-total deprivation of transgender people’s— including transgender children’s—need for medical treatment to achieve their highly natural desire for internal/external gender alignment.

Comments

Available at: https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/the-right-to-seek-joy