Title IX - Supreme Court Hearings

Interesting, but I guess wholly predictable that the only reliable line in the sand for progressive politicians is women's sports, where they are being obligated to row back.
Because only here is the insanity totally visible, stripped in public of obfuscating language.
A male punches way harder, runs way faster, spikes way more violently, has that way wider stroke span.
All to be seen in pure black and white.
Prisons? Refuges? Toilets? These remain spaces that aren't visible to the public at large, where language can still obfuscate, where the wider public who maybe are skeptical but haven't necessarily been peaked, here the progressives would still love to umm and ahh.
But in sports, it's on the line, it's visible for all to see.

Politicially the trans train has run out of road.

Pre-last US Election you'd have Dems tripping over themselves to answer these questions.

I do not believe the US public think that minors should have gender affirming care to a greater degree than Brits (as per the yougov survey).

The penny is dropping.

There is no public support for this nonsense. Laws require public consensus to hold and be able to be implimented. Otherwise they will eventually get revoked / overturned or found to not be what some dumbass thought they were.

Another telling article. Axios asked basic questions they only got three answers.

Dems' potential 2028 Presidential contenders cautious on trans rights

We asked:

Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls' sports?

Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones?
And what is your response to the question: "Can a man become a woman?"

Former Vice President Harris, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, California Rep. Ro Khanna and Newsom were among those declining to comment or not responding.

What they're saying:
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were the only three potential contenders who shared answers.

A spokesperson for Gov. Shapiro pointed us to his previous remarks to The Atlantic, in which he said local scholastic sports officials, not politicians, should make decisions about transgender athletes.
But the governor said his personal view is different, and that trans youths don't "deserve an unfair advantage on the playing field." His spokesperson also noted Shapiro's recent legal action against the Trump administration over its efforts to stop gender-transition care for children.

Emanuel said his positions hadn't changed since he was interviewed recently by conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, who asked whether "boys should be able to play in girls' sports" and "can a man become a woman?"

Emanuel said "no" to both. He also said parents should make decisions about whether transgender minors are able to access hormones.
A Buttigieg spokesperson referred us to an NPR interview in which he was asked to respond to the conversation between Emanuel and Kelly.

Buttigieg called for "compassion" and questioned "past orthodoxies in my party ... around sports." He said decisions about trans athletes should be made by sports leagues. His spokesperson didn't address the other questions.

More
https://www.axios.com/2026/01/18/democrats-2028-struggle-trans-rights

Alittle like how male people who describe themselves as non-binary have more wins than the female people who compete in that special category.

Whodathunkit?

SCJ Alito: Do you think that the success of trans athletes in women’s sports is proportional to the percentage of trans athletes who participate in women’s sports?

BOOM! He gets it.

I wish he would also ask whether trans men experience the same level of success in men’s sports as trans women do in women’s sports, and if not, why not?

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/alito-presses-trans-female-athletes-lawyer-definition-woman-during-scotus-hearing

CNN have a supportive interview with Chris Mosier

Amid a culture war over trans athletes, Team USA’s Chris Mosier says he’ll stay the course | CNN https://share.google/Q8Ia5TJl18Wfdm3in

Chris is a biological female (ofck). She says a fair bit about being fearful of being attacked when she's on her way to some event or other, but the attacks never came. I wish GC women could say the same.

I was just reading this.

Whoa The Wapo! ...

The opinion article was written by Megan McArdle. Apparently, she has in the past written about JK Rowling, Hilary Cass and Dr Kaltiala which has meant some people consider her "anti-trans".

She shines a beacon on the naked emperor.

"A forthright argument is the better tactic. Same-sex marriage advocates won by convincing the public of three propositions: That gay people were born that way, not making a “lifestyle choice”; that excluding them from marriage was therefore unfair; and that giving gay people the same marriage rights as everyone else was good for them and didn’t hurt anyone else."

"A parallel process for trans inclusion in sports would have consisted of convincing people either that women’s sports reflect a social distinction, not a biological one; that trans inclusion takes precedence over creating a level playing field for biological females; or that trans women are biologically indistinguishable from cisgender women. All were tried. None worked."

and

"The law requires clear definitions, not ecstatic invocations of the infinite complexity of human experience. For most normal people, asking whether we can even know what a woman is doesn’t make you look wise and compassionate; it makes you look crazy. No wonder Republican senators keep asking progressives at hearings some version of this question: “What is a woman?”

None found a good answer, which could not be evaded by dressing a senator down for transphobia, nor by challenging the premise of the question, nor by pleading ignorance. “I’m not a biologist,” Ketanji Brown Jackson said during her confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. Afraid to suggest that biology might matter more than gender identity, not quite brave enough to assert the opposite, they instead made themselves look foolish. As did writers and scientists who started insisting that even the idea of two sexes was simplistic and unscientific.

This worked among college-educated elites, bolstered by the fear of being called a bigot. But tragically, the more trans rights advanced, the more popular support retreated. A clean compromise was available, similar to the compromise we made on women’s sports: treat males and females as interchangeable in contexts where biology is irrelevant or minor, while reserving segregated spaces for contexts where it is not. Advocates rejected that compromise in favor of an insistence that gender identity always trumps biology. The risk of all-or-nothing arguments is that they often end with nothing."

Another significant Wash Post article
The gaping hole in the transgender sports case
Avoiding the definition of a woman is hurting the trans rights movement.
https://archive.is/TCJLd

It's been summarised in the Critic

The future of girls’ and women’s sports is being decided in the US | Fiona McAnena | The Critic Magazine https://share.google/yNHZOx60RK0uWeHjj

by the amazing Fiona McAnena.

Excellent (as usual) commentary from sex matters on the case. (Fiona and Helen)

Also amicus briefs:

https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/brief-of-sex-matters-as-amicus-curiae-us-supreme-court/

Thank you too, Crone. I've got a train journey in a couple of hours, so should be able to listen then.

The court transcripts are here on the Supreme Court website:
Argument Transcripts

And the audio recording is here:
Argument Audio

Thank you!

@Datun The podcast High Court Report has the oral arguments if you want to hear more than short clips.

I'm not on Twitter, so I'm only getting snippets of the coverage, and also from people covering it. Which isn't quite the same as seeing the real thing.

But this was jaw dropping. Apart from anything else, for the love of God don't go into court without thinking of a term that covers femininity that doesn't sound like you're a raging homophobe.

And the premise is so risible, it's difficult to believe. How ya going test that??! Tell everyone to hold out their hands to determine the rigidity of their carpals??

These people must be dying inside. All that time, money and effort to become as qualified as they are, and they're claiming that not just that you can, but that you must, determine sex based on a homophobic slur.

@GallantKumquat

It's not unusual for lawyers arguing a point to rely on a case for more than it actually said. They often do that (and I mean often) when that's the most support they can find for their point. That does not change what Skrmetti actually held. IMO it more shows that there is not yet any actual ruling to support for their point.

I'm glad that we mostly agree.

For those reading, the case itself lets you see how the votes on the issue broke down. After a case is argued, various judges draft opinions and try to get a majority of judges to agree with their opinion. The majority opinion is the opinion of the Court. It will be written by a justice (or judge for the Circuit Courts) who voted with the majority. Both the concurring opinions and the dissenting opinions were written by other judges, generally to try to persuade the other judges to adopt their view.

Even if the concurring opinion or dissenting opinion does not get a majority of votes, it can persuade the other justices/judges, e.g., by changing the rationale for the majority ruling, by expanding or narrowing its holding, by bringing up points that need to be addressed in the majority opinion, etc. Often, the draft of the majority opinion is changed to accommodate support for (or opposition to) points in the other circulating opinions. Same for the concurring and dissenting opinions being circulated. Occasionally, one of the concurring or dissenting opinions being circulated gains enough support to become the majority opinion.

The published opinion will tell you which justices/judges supported each concurring or dissenting opinion. That is often useful for predicting how they will vote in future cases. E.g., in Skrmetti, only Barrett and Thomas supported her view that gender is not a suspect class. [ JUSTICE BARRETT , with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins,concurring.
Because the Court concludes that Tennessee’s Senate Bill
1 does not classify on the basis of transgender status, it does
not resolve whether transgender status constitutes a sus-
pect class. Ante, at 16–18; see Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S.
484, 496 (1974). I write separately to explain why, in my
view, it does not.]

So in the case before the SCOTUS now, those two will almost certainly support "no suspect class/use rational basis standard."

No other justices agreed with Justice Alito's concurrence [ I agree with much of the discussion in
Part II–A–1, which holds that Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 (SB1) does not classify on the basis of “sex,” but I set out my own analysis of this issue in Part I of this opinion. I do not join Part II–A–2 of the opinion of the Court, which concludes that SB1 does not classify on the basis of “transgender status.” There is a strong argument that SB1 does classify on that ground, but I find it unnecessary to
decide that question. I would assume for the sake of argument that the law classifies based on transgender status, but I would nevertheless sustain the law because such a classification does not warrant heightened scrutiny. I also
do not join Part II–A–3 of the Court’s opinion because I do not believe that the reasoning employed in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U. S. 644 (2020), is applicable when determining whether a law classifies based on sex for Equal Protection Clause purposes]

So Alito also believes that transgender status does not warrant heightened scrutiny but no one else agrees with his reasoning.

BTW, you can see from the opinion that the concurring opinions are only the individual opinions of the justice who wrote or joined them bc at the top of each page of the concurrence, it says, e.g., "Opinion of ALITO, J.", not the opinion of the Court. At the top of each page of Robert's majority opinion, it says "opinion of the Court". They tell you on every page whether the part you're reading is the opinion of the Court or the opinion of the individual justice.

The dissenters are more unified. It says at the top of Sotomayer's dissent
"JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE JACKSON joins,
and with whom JUSTICE KAGAN joins as to all but Part V,
dissenting"

Nothing important to add except 'Hecox'!? Bit of a self misgendering. I'm surprised he's not changed his name to something more gender confirming like 'Shefanni'.

I think I see what the objection is now. With appreciation to @MarieDeGournay, rather than re-argue the specific points , some of which were badly stated and others which were in error, let me restate my position:

Skrmetti might have been narrow in some sense, but it's effects are broad and seismic. This can be seen in practice as it allow the court to cleanly grant the stay requested in Orr v. Trump (the passport case).

In Orr, SCOTUS sided with the Trump administration and accepted the requested stay on the State Department rule stipulating that biological sex be used for the US passport sex marker. SCOTUS did not mention Skrmetti directly in granting the stay, but Jackson’s dissent criticises the majority’s reasoning in ways that track the framework established in that case. In addition the government’s lawyers rely heavily on the ruling, explicitly treating United States v. Skrmetti as the controlling precedent. This includes relying on the ruling for

• the definition of sex,
• the level of scrutiny
• the irrelevance of medical consensus,
• the rational-basis standard, and the
• invalid-ness of transgender identity as a category, i.e. not a quasi-suspect class and not an immutable characteristic, even though this was in the concurring opinion.

With respect to the last, the following passage appears in the administration’s stay application, where the government quotes and relies on concurrence language from Skrmetti to support its immutability argument.

“In any event, trans-identifying people do not satisfy respondents’ preferred test. First, trans-identifying people are not marked by the “obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics” of a “discrete group.” Skrmetti, 145 S. Ct. at 1851 (Barrett, J., concurring) (citations omitted); see id. at 1866 (Alito, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). “

So, it’s clear Skrmetti is an extremely important case with broad implications in transgender law. It’s also reasonable to point out that it’s full relevance (including in Orr) remains to be determined as the case law is worked out.

With respect to what Skrmetti actually held, you are correct that the Supreme Court did not adopt the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning, so that reasoning is not part of the national precedent. The Sixth Circuit’s analysis remains persuasive within that circuit, but it does not bind other courts. The fact that the Sixth Circuit’s judgement was upheld, combined with the concurring opinions’ articulation of immutability, explains why government attorneys felt justified citing the case when making the immutability argument. And while concurring opinions do not carry the force of law, they often have more interpretive weight than dissents.

I’m more than happy to admit that the full implications of the Skrmetti haven’t been worked out in law, but I stand by my assertion that it’s already clear that it's broadly important. In addition, I think there’s good evidence that the court desires to set down precedent that insists that transgender identity and biological sex are separate in federal law and that Skrmetti was the first step in establishing that doctrine.

A lot of the crazier clips from the hearing is going viral. Not looking good for the TAs.

Meanwhile Trump administration has timed this point to go after a bunch of schools on a massive scale. Obviously they are hoping to use this stuff in the mid terms.

Affected states: NYC, NYS, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Vermont, Mass, Penn and Washington state

Trump administration opens 18 new probes over trans athletes
New York City’s school system and 14 other districts face investigations for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. Three colleges also face probes.
https://archive.is/n7uNi

One thing that is really evident is how anxious Block is. Initially I thought that might be because he's giving evidence in front of the biggest court in the land. But, he's a senior attorney, that can't be it.
No, it's because whether he knows it implicitly or it's indirectly inconsistent at the back of his mind, he's giving answers and making arguments that are pure unreality, as far from definitive, proveable facts, and common sense suppositions, as you can get.
That would make anyone sound unsure, uncertain, unsteady, even an attorney with years of experience making clear, sober statements in court.
No surprise, the illusion dissolves on first contact with the cold air of the real world.

Think it's a version of "properly feminine women can't open pickle jars".
Odd to see Matt Walsh & the ACLU converge like this.

The difficulty remains for Block that for a court to accept that one is perceived as [x], there must be an agreed definition of [x] & that definition can neither be circular nor, "vibes man, vibes". Block seems to have scuppered himself here in much the same way that lawyers for the Gender Identitarian side in Skrmetti scuppered the possibility of trans being a Suspect Class.

Maybe women can make exceptions for the Incel class as well?
I mean, they don't fit in either.

Listening to the recording of KJB’s appeal on behalf of men/boys who say they are not like all the other men/boys. In that she says they aren’t as good as the others of their sex, and sure they may as well get play against women/girls as a compensation for that. They aren’t a different class of male, even. Seems to try to pretend they are a class of woman/girl. The male class of woman/girl, no less. (Very strange angle from someone, a woman even, who said she didn’t even know what a woman was because she was not a biologist). And, implied is ‘screw the women/girls right for female hard work and excellence to shine’. It is kind of like females should know they are just support humans for all the humans of the male sex who wish to piss all over their rights. Paraphrased.

Doesn’t that exact same thing apply to very many ‘classes’ of men. In fact any man who claims not to have the same advantage as the athletes of their own sex. They are all ‘classes’ of men other than the good male athletes. Or ordinary male athletes. They are all men, though.

Why are these flat earthers p&ssing down everyone’s back and trying to claim it is raining? They pretend to not understand the most basic reality, yet they make the most bizarre and ludicrous statements and claims.