Commentary: How right-wing anti-transgender attacks led to a Supreme Court ruling upholding sex discrimination
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Set us as preferred On the surface, the Supreme Court’s June 30 opinion upholding state laws barring transgender girls from women’s and girl’s sports teams looks like a victory for women’s rights.The 6-3 opinion by Justice Brett M.
Kavanaugh certainly presents itself that way.“Females and males have inherent physical differences relevant to athletic performance,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“Therefore, in contact sports, forcing female athletes to compete against males can create significant safety risks.” He also asserted that “forcing female athletes to compete against males can undermine competitive fairness.”The ruling applied to prohibitions enacted in Idaho and West Virginia against “biological” males’ participation on women’s teams in public schools.Federal judges in both states overturned the bans.
The Supreme Court majority restored them.The ruling essentially upholds similar bans enacted in 25 other states.There was no record of any transgender person participating in school sports in the State, let alone any ‘problem’ with transgender students ...
creating unfair competition or unsafe conditions.— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, demolishing the Supreme Court’s argument in favor of banning transgender girls from girl’s sportsKavanaugh, like Donald Trump and others in the anti-transgender camp, maintained that one’s gender is an immutable fact of life, established even before birth.Anything else, Trump stated in an executive order he issued on inauguration day 2025, could only be the product of “gender ideology extremism.” The U.S., his order stated, recognizes “two sexes, male and female.
These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” That’s a “biological truth,” he declared.Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize wi...