U.S. Supreme Court decision on trans youth in sports ignores trans perspectives and does not change CA law.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports Act” and Idaho’s “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which prohibit transgender women and girls from participating on women’s and girls’ school sports teams. The Court rejected arguments that bans on transgender student-athletes’ participation violate Title IX and/or the federal constitutional guarantee of Equal Protection. This result was devastating for plaintiffs Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, and for other transgender girls and women striving to play school sports in the 27 states that have passed similarly restrictive laws.
As an advocate for trans rights in California specifically, I breathed a sigh of relief at the SCOTUS opinion’s footnote explaining it does not impact state laws that protect trans girls’ participation, like the School Success and Opportunity Act that has supported equal opportunity for transgender student-athletes in the Golden State since 2014. I’m also glad the Court took a narrow approach and didn’t address trans plaintiffs’ ability to pursue other kinds of Title IX or constitutional claims.
Meanwhile I’m angry about how this decision, like the exclusionary policies it upholds, elides trans athlete perspectives without actually “saving” anyone from the real challenges facing women’s athletics.
Writing for the Supreme Court majority, Justice Kavanaugh highlighted the “zero sum” nature of sports, including the fact that “every competitor who wins a race or competition deprives another athlete of that victory, or medal, or prize.” This passage purports to answer the question of why it’s harmful to let a girl play who happens to be trans. But it does no such thing.
Trans athletes like Lindsay and Becky play sports for the exact same reasons their peers do—to get exercise and build skills while also having fun and feeling included on a team. And all of us who enjoy playing or even watching sports know that there are always winners and losers. Sometimes that includes losing to an athlete who is significantly bigger, stronger, and/or faster. Other times, it means losing to an athlete who is significantly smaller, nimbler, and/or more graceful.
Differences from athlete to athlete stem partly from variations in their bodies and “natural” skill levels, but also involve myriad other “fairness issues,” such as some competitors’ ability to afford access to fancier training equipment and facilities, and others’ greater struggle to focus in practice while stressed about money, immigration status, and other family challenges. How to win and lose graciously amid all these dynamics are among the central lessons children learn from athletic endeavors. Parents and coaches normally help young athletes process their frustrations and move on to preparing for the next competition. But the Court here blesses the presumption that a trans woman competitor is always unfairly depriving others of victory, and encourages other athletes to decry and attack her presence rather than square up against her in good faith.
Safety issues are present, serious, and even pervasive in the world of girls’ and women’s sports. But banning trans athletes’ participation does nothing to address the bullying, threats, physical violence, and sexual abuse athletes at every level continue to endure at the hands of coaches, doctors and other team staff, and “fans.” Genuine fairness issues also continue to plague women’s sports, including inequities between school athletic programs for men and boys versus those for girls and women. Addressing those imbalances will require greater investment, both in the women’s sports programs themselves and in enforcement of Title IX.
But rather than take constructive steps in that direction, the current federal administration has chosen to slash the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and direct many of the remaining resources to attacks on trans student-athletes. And now questions loom about how states like West Virginia and Idaho will implement their bans, including whether invasive “gender verification” will be required of all participants in girls’ sports or selectively demanded from athletes who are Black, non-conforming in their gender expression, or otherwise targets of additional scrutiny.
Justice Kavanaugh noted that “[n]o student-athlete…deserves to be ostracized or vilified,” including those who are transgender. On that point he was right. But the comment rings hollow in the context of a decision that treats transness alone as a legitimate reason to lock a girl out of eligibility for every school sports team in her state, without any evidence that she has a competitive advantage.
Kavanaugh also waxed poetic about how “lessons and experiences in sports have empowered millions of American women who have gone on to thrive in all aspects of American life”—but did so right in the act of denying those lessons and experiences, and the resulting empowerment, to a subset of girls and women who are currently dealing with a dizzying onslaught of attacks on their medically necessary health care, accurate identification, safe bathroom usage, and much more.
Trans girls and women collectively—like other marginalized and stigmatized communities—are in serious need of opportunities to build confidence and supportive relationships with peers and mentors. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s misguided decision, even in high-equality states like California, it’s going to take a lot of work to defend trans students’ access to the many such opportunities sports naturally afford.
Amanda Goad — Audrey Irmas Director of the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project
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“TRANS KIDS BELONG ON OUR TEAMS, IN OUR SCHOOLS, AND IN OUR COMMUNITIES”
No one is stopping any trans kids from doing any of these things.
That’s not exactly true
How so?
Look at the Facebook comments for example on the Shasta School Board Member – you get all sorts of prejudicial comments, the worst we attempted to remove, but many are still there. Charges of mental illness, grooming, child abuse, and just ugly comments. At one level you are correct on this specific issue – you can exclude transgender children from participating on specific sports teams without a claim broader exclusion, but very quickly the conversation devolves into horrible comments, bigotry and worse. This is a new issue for most people in this country and those kinds of comments are likely to lead to a bad place. (If you want to both sides this, fine, but it doesn’t erase the fundamental problem). And to say no one is trying to do those things is just inaccurate – many are.
“Lead to a bad place” is an understatement. In that comment section you have this:
“I believe we need to ensure that all people working in any position connected to the health and welfare of children should be confirmed as having no mental health issues. With the exception of a very tiny percent of the population afflicted with actual psychical gender dysphoria at birth, all other people identifying as being a gender other than their biological birth gender should be considered as having mental health dysfunction and should be banned from any role with any power and control over children.”
So a local individual has called for workplace discrimination, essentially saying that basic civil rights should not apply to trans people.
The goal of the conservative movement is complete erasure of trans people from public life.
https://www.facebook.com/davisvanguard/posts/pfbid0Wi9nHyQCQYWC3xRPTaRzLth4mrk8q7b7fHSRXUQ9cWFzJQDannbgVvBJjRXxYpr5l
Their argument being that children are vulnerable to adult influence.
It’s reasonable to conclude that the local “anti trans” activist’s kid, for example, probably wouldn’t have been “temporarily trans” if enrolled in Oklahoma instead of Davis. And if you believe that transgenderism is a mental illness, it’s logical to ensure that kids aren’t exposed to and influenced by a trans person in a position of authority – especially someone who is on a “mission” in regard to acceptance. (Instead of just teaching math, science, reading, etc.).
And the next thing you know, you have drag queen story hour at the local library – perhaps even the same library that attempted to ban the phrase “biological male”. (Is drag queen story hour ACTUALLY about developing reading skills?)
The same type of arguments once applied regarding gay people. But being gay doesn’t generally lead to medical interventions, males playing on girls’ teams, etc.
So on one side, you have people who view this as losing their kids to mental illness and medical interventions encouraged by school systems, vs. the other side who seek to create a welcoming environment for anyone identifying as trans (and don’t view it as a mental illness).
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground regarding this issue.
For what it’s worth, I still personally wouldn’t support a ban on trans employment. Though I’m not sure if it actually is a form of mental illness, or if there’s sometimes a biological aspect.
I personally don’t believe in gender, itself. That’s a made-up concept. I also believe that doctors generally “observe” (not “assign”) sex at birth. The same thing we do with cats, dogs, pigs, etc.
“So a local individual has called for workplace discrimination, essentially saying that basic civil rights should not apply to trans people.
The goal of the conservative movement is complete erasure of trans people from public life.”
Boy, talk about projection. You take a comment and project it on an entire movement.
“Boy, talk about projection. You take a comment and project it on an entire movement.”
Everything you need to know about the ‘entire movement’ is in Project 2025. If you want to see how it was implemented, look at Orban’s Hungary.
Do you believe that trans people “should be banned from any role with any power and control over children”?
I saw an X post the other day that showed a liberal woman saying that when the Democrats are back in control that everyone who voted for Trump will face consequences and jail time.
So is that the goal of all Democrats, the complete incarceration of anyone who voted for Trump?
Don’t be silly…
Except you said “no one” and as I pointed out that is literally not true. And I fully acknowledged in my comment there is some both sides to this.
The part of Don’s comment that’s “over-reaching” compared to the comment he cited is this:
“The goal of the conservative movement is complete erasure of trans people from public life.”
One only has to look at the comment he cited to see that it doesn’t match what Don claims.
“The goal of the conservative movement is complete erasure of trans people from public life.”
Don Shor, tell me you really don’t believe this.
I and everyone I know who are conservatives don’t feel this way.
Among the many proposals being implemented by legislation, executive orders, and subpoenas:
Forced outing.
Forced detransitioning (eliminating HRT, puberty blockers)
Support for conversion therapy.
Banning trans medical care at all ages.
Ban visible displays of support for trans and gay youth.
Forced out of the military.
Rescission of driver’s licenses and passports.
Bathroom bans.
Demanding medical records of all trans patients from hospitals and care providers.
Next steps?
The quote I posted is a clear expression of support for employment discrimination against trans individuals.
Put teachers and counselors on sex offender registries if they “spread transgender ideology?” This has literally been proposed by the Heritage Foundation.
It is the explicit goal of the Heritage Foundation (authors of Project 2025) to ban all gender affirming medical care for all people. They want to make it impossible for trans people to function in society, to force them back into the closet. Conservatives routinely equate transgenderism with pornography and seek to criminalize it as such. That is exactly the tactic that was used in Hungary and Russia and proposed in Project 2025. They routinely assert that trans people are pedophiles and accuse them of grooming.
From Project 2025:
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion(“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot ….
Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Transgenderism is not contagious.
It is not a mental illness.
Trans people are not inherently dangerous.
Trans citizens have the same rights that we all do. I would hope true conservatives would understand that.
“It is the explicit goal of the Heritage Foundation (authors of Project 2025)”
Do you really think all conservatives support everything in Project 2025?