AP NewsBy MARK SHERMANJanuary 13, 2026The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to deal another setback to transgender people and uphold state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams.The court’s conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, signaled during more than three hours of arguments it would rule the state bans don’t violate either the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.More than two dozen Republican-led states have adopted bans on female transgender athletes. Lower courts had ruled for the transgender athletes who challenged laws in Idaho and West Virginia.
Do you know the can-of-worms that this will open up? I fear that their ruling will allow states to determine who plays.
The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by transgender people versus the need for fair competition for women and girls, the main argument made by the states.
Even though all the research shows that there is no difference, research is very clear that school sports are one of the main ways students develop:
- Teamwork and cooperation
- Leadership and responsibility
- Resilience after failure
- Sportsmanship and respect
- Belonging and social connection
When transgender students are categorically excluded from school sports, they are denied access to those developmental benefits that other students receive as a normal part of education. The practical effect of bans is that trans students lose opportunities to learn those skills through sports.
But the Supreme Court thanks to the Republicans have packed the court with right-wing conservatives.
The court’s hearing on state bans on trans athletes in women’s sports was not a serious legal exercise. It was bigotry masquerading as law.The NationElie MystalJanuary 14, 2026On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a pair of cases weighing the constitutionality of state bans on transgender women and girls in competitive sports. Given the Republican antipathy toward the trans community—and the way conservatives have ginned up a crusade against the less than 1 percent of trans women who want to compete in interscholastic athletics—the outcome of the cases is hardly in doubt. The Supreme Court will almost certainly vote, 6–3, to uphold the bans, with the anti-trans supermajority jury-rigging an opinion out of their various justifications for bigotry.[...]The bigots further argued that, even if the laws do target trans athletes (which, you know, they obviously do), the laws should be upheld because the states have a compelling interest in protecting women and girls. They argue that banning trans athletes is necessary to ensure the “safety” of athletic competition for women and girls.
But the thing is all the data shows that there is not danger with trans athletes! But the justices don't want to hear that. The Republicans like to parade their victims.
By Marisa Ingemi,The San Francisco ChronicleFeb 6, 2025The news release from the Department of Education on Thursday announcing an investigation into San Jose State for allowing a transgender player on its women’s volleyball team promoted a false narrative about the velocity of that player’s spikes and the injury risk her participation meant for other players.The San Jose State volleyball player’s college career is over, and the Spartans’ season ended in November, but the DOE’s decision to relitigate her presence on the team has resurrected demonstrably false claims of documented events.The release, which names the player despite her not being publicly out as transgender, claims the player was “dominant” and “included reported dangerous strikes directed at opponent’s faces, forced competing teams to forfeit games to protect their female athletes.”[...]“I saw the slam, it was a slam. I never saw a ball hit so hard, hit the girl in the head,” Trump claimed of the play that resulted in the Aztecs player being hit in the arm. “But other people, even in volleyball, they’ve been permanently, I mean, they’ve been really hurt badly. Women playing men.”ESPN found that spike to be 60 mph, around the average speed of a spike in NCAA women’s volleyball.
That is what the Republicans do: they lie to create public dissent against us. They take one isolated injury—like the girl in Maine last year—and make it a national incident, ignoring the 60,000 other sports injuries that happen every year. They make it sound like we are out there knocking out the opposition!
There is a case before the Supreme Court right now that is about way more than just sports:
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUITIn 2023, Tennessee joined the growing number of States restricting sex transition treatments for minors by enacting the Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity, Senate Bill 1 (SB1). SB1 prohibits healthcare providers from prescribing, administering, or dispensing puberty blockers or hormones to any minor for the purpose of (1) enabling the minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex, or (2) treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s biological sex and asserted identity. At the same time, SB1 permits a healthcare provider to administer puberty blockers or hormones to treat a minor’s congenital defect, precocious puberty, disease, or physical injury.Three transgender minors, their parents, and a doctor challenged SB1 under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court partially enjoined SB1, finding that transgender individuals constitute a quasi-suspect class, that SB1 discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status, and that SB1 was unlikely to survive intermediate scrutiny. The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that the law did not trigger heightened scrutiny and satisfied rational basis review. This Court granted certiorari to decide whether SB1 violates the Equal Protection Clause.
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that is what is under attack! What the opposition is claiming is that we are not a protective class.
That is the really scary part was what justice have said about us!
SCOTUS BlogBy Amy Howeon Jan 13, 2026The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to uphold laws that prohibit transgender women and girls from competing on women’s and girls’ school sports teams. After nearly three-and-a-half hours of arguments in a pair of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, a majority of the justices appeared to agree with the states that the laws can remain in place, even if it was not clear how broadly their ruling might sweep.The court’s three Democratic appointees appeared to recognize that the challengers faced an uphill battle. They seemed to devote much of their efforts to mitigating their losses – either by getting one case thrown out or by limiting the court’s decision to a narrow one.Idaho adopted its law in 2020; West Virginia followed one year later. Lindsay Hecox, now 24 years old, went to federal court in Idaho to challenge that state’s law. Hecox is a transgender woman who wanted to be able to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University; she did not make those teams but later played club sports.
It doesn't look good for us!
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who in 2020 wrote for the majority in Bostock v. Clayton County, holding that federal employment discrimination laws protect LGBTQ employees, initially appeared to voice some support for the challengers. He pushed back against the states’ argument that transgender people are not a “suspect” class – that is, people who have historically been subject to discrimination (which would require any discrimination against them to be subject to heightened scrutiny).
The National Association of Attorneys General writes that,
Justice Barrett filed a concurring opinion, which Justice Thomas joined. She wrote to explain why, in her view, transgender status does not constitute a suspect class. She noted that the Court has not added another suspect class beyond race, sex, and alienage in more than 40 years―rejecting that status for the mentally disabled, the elderly, and the poor. In concluding that transgender status should not be the first new suspect class in more than 40 years, Justice Barrett pointed to the following considerations: (1) “transgender status is not marked by the same sort of ‘obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics’ as race or sex”; (2) the transgender population a not a “discrete group”; and (3) “holding that transgender people constitute a suspect class would require courts to oversee all manner of policy choices normally committed to legislative discretion.” Justice Barrett added that the Fourteenth Amendment is concerned with de jure discrimination against a group, not private animus. Yet the plaintiffs and the district court focused solely on the latter.Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. He “agree[d] with the Court that SB1 does not classify on the basis of ‘sex’ within the meaning of our equal protection precedents.” And for reasons similar to Justice Thomas, he did not believe that Bostock’s reasoning extends to the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Alito then turned to whether SB1 classifies based on transgender status. He would avoid that issue and instead hold that transgender status is not a quasi-suspect class. As he explained at greater length, “[t]ransgender status is not ‘immutable,’ and as a result, persons can and do move into and out of the class. Members of the class differ widely among themselves, and it is often difficult for others to determine whether a person is a member of the class. And transgender individuals have not been subjected to a history of discrimination that is comparable to past discrimination against the groups we have classified as suspect or ‘quasi-suspect.’”
Look I'm not a lawyer but one thing that I learned by being around them you can never get a lawyer to say "yes" or "no" it is always "In my opinion" so in my opinion as a non-attorney spokes person...
This all stems from the Republican belief that we chose to be trans and therefore it doesn't fall under a protective class!
Justice Sotomayor criticized the Court’s reasoning: “the very ‘medical purpose’ SB1 prohibits is defined by reference to the patient’s sex. Key to whether a minor may receive puberty blockers or hormones is whether the treatment facilitates the ‘medical purpose’ of helping the minor live or appear ‘inconsistent with’ the minor’s sex.” And while there may also be a medical difference in the treatment, “[a]s long as sex is one of the law’s distinguishing features [] the law classifies on the basis of sex, and the Equal Protection Clause requires application of intermediate scrutiny.”Justice Sotomayor then maintained that SB1 discriminates on the basis of transgender status, which (in her view) is a suspect class. “SB1 prohibits Tennessee physicians from offering hormones and puberty blockers to allow a minor to ‘identify with’ a gender identity inconsistent with her sex. Desiring to ‘identify with’ a gender identity inconsistent with sex is, of course, exactly what it means to be transgender.” (Citation omitted.) She criticized the Court’s reliance on Geduldig, a decision that was “egregiously wrong” and is readily distinguishable. And, she said, there cannot “be serious dispute that transgender persons bear the hallmarks of a quasi-suspect class.” “Transgender people have long been subject to discrimination in healthcare, employment, and housing, and to rampant harassment and physical violence.” Further, “[i]ndividuals whose gender identity diverges from their sex identified at birth (whether labeled as ‘transgender’ at the time or not) [] have been subject to a lengthy history of de jure discrimination in the form of cross-dressing bans, police brutality, and anti-sodomy laws.”
But we have our supporters, the ACLU writes:
Many women athletes have spoken out against bullying and discrimination against transgender student-athletes, including Billie Jean King, Megan Rapinoe, Dawn Staley, Sue Bird, and Brianna Turner, as well as leading organizations fighting for gender equality in athletics, including the Women’s Sports Foundation, the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association, and the National Women’s Law Center.
But the Republicans don't care, they are playing to their base.
So the bottom-line?
No comments:
Post a Comment