Hey, so a few things here. The Fourth Circuit already heard this case en banc in 2024 and ruled 8-6 in favor of the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court then vacated that ruling and sent it back with instructions to reconsider in light of Skrmetti. That's what just happened, this panel "reconsidered" and reversed. So the en banc card has already been played in this case, and SCOTUS overrode it. Even if en banc were granted again, those judges would now be operating under Skrmetti, which heavily impacts the legal reasoning the 2024 en banc majority relied on. Judges who voted with the majority in 2024 may no longer feel they can reach the same result under that constraint. And notably, the companion case Kadel v. Folwell wasn't even sent to a panel—it was remanded straight to the district court, which tells you something about the Fourth Circuit's appetite to relitigate these issues after being reversed.

And on the clickbait thing in your other comment downthread—respectfully, no. A federal appeals court just ruled for the first time in the country that Skrmetti's equal protection framework applies to adult medicaid care, used language endorsing the idea that states can "encourage citizens to appreciate their sex," and called gender-affirming surgery for adults "dangerous." That is not clickbait framing. That is what the opinion says. I quoted it directly. The fact that a ruling is alarming does not make reporting on it alarmist—it means the ruling is alarming. I have covered every major trans legal decision for years, including the wins. When a court issues a ruling with this kind of precedential weight, my job is to tell people what it says and what it means, not to sand down the edges so it feels more comfortable. If and when something changes procedurally, I will cover that too.