Supreme Court lets states ban transgender athletes from women's sports
I'm so thankful to Becky and her mom for their trust, generosity, and strength in front of the Supreme Court. No matter what the Court says, Becky is a hero for standing up for herself and trans girls like her. Doing what's right, even when the odds are against you, is the definition of courage.
I still think Becky is right that girls should get to play sports
She is an amazing example to us all. I hope she knows how much support and admiration there is out here for her
If I played sports as a kid, it would have been my honor to play with Becky. Becky, if you read this - this old chick thinks you got a bright future. :)
It’s so weird the right is anti freedom to just live as a teen.
Thank you Ms. Branstetter, Becky, and Becky’s mom for all of your incredible work on behalf of all trans kids.
Becky’s just a teenager asking to be allowed to do normal teen things. It’s incredibly sad that doing so requires courage these days. Cheering her on.
Sending love and strength to all trans people. You will eternally have my support & allyship, regardless of me or anyone liking you individually or not (true equality, no?) Your rights are my rights are our rights. We're in this together.
Huge hugs to Becky and her family today. I hope they are able to find some peace in the chaos and know how much the rest of us in the same boat appreciate and love them 💕
One day, and sadly that day feels more far off now than ever it, people like Becky will be in history books. Noted as important & courageous heroes who stood up to tyranny & bigots to make this world a better place for all. I hope Becky and all other trans folk alive today get to see that day.
Trans rights are human rights.
Someday I sincerely hope this brave young woman will enjoy vindication.
Becky is a hero. When she is old enough I hope she runs for something.
Becky with the good heart.
Trans rights are human rights 🏳️⚧️
This kid is brave as hell, protect her at all costs
It’s up to all of us to take up the fight so Becky and all trans kids and adults know we won’t let this monstrous ruling stand.
broken system designed to target and terrorize the current political scapegoat. we have to completely scrap the current supreme court. trans rights will prevail, we’ll keep playing sports, we will win
The idea that there is any competitive integrity to be upheld in high school sports is an idea so farcical it could only come from the guy getting into drunken fights at little league games.
I'm no expert on how long term limits should be. But every one of em, should be fired. Locked out. Topd to pound sand. And new judges put in place with term limits.
Turn them to scrap imo
Here's why you should care about the trans athletes case today: Because if discrimination on the basis of gender identity doesn't violate equal protection, trans people can be segregated, outed, denied medical care, denied housing, denied jobs, and excluded by the government.
Our gender identities can be banned. In other words, today was a major step on the road to erasing us all. It was never about sports and always about the precedent. Thomas' concurrence says as much.
I always feel like the fundamental question is who decides. Should you be allowed to decide your gender or should some asshole in the government get to tell you who you are and how you get treated?
There are other paths. Sex discrimination based on sex stereotypes has whole chapters of support in law books. This one odd tactic has failed. Kavanaugh’s opinion is so factually wrong it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, and he’s a guy who has proven he can’t read the constitution.
How the fuck do these clowns in the Supreme Court justify this??? Absolute insanity. We need to tear down the entire failed legal apparatus at this point. What good is the law is a handful of bigots taking corporate cash can just shit all over it?
Waiting for peaceful protest to prevent my peoples genocide...
And THEN who's next? It's only a matter of time with these godless monsters before we all get rounded up.
This is my read as well. If we are denied equal protection when laws and bans are written specifically to target trans people, then there is no avenue of redress for us from any ban described here. We've already had redress for employment discrimination via EEOC denied us as a class.
Anyone who has ever said "it's just sports why do you care", here is why.
If trans people aren't safe, nobody is safe. Bigotry and segregation never end with just one group
“Because if discrimination on the basis of gender identity doesn't violate equal protection, trans people can be segregated, outed, denied medical care, denied housing, denied jobs, and excluded by the government.”
Also, if discrimination on the basis of gender doesn't violate equal protection, then cis women will also be affected. If you don't care about trans people, fuck you, but you probably do care about this.
So funny how these fuckers “care about women’s sports” when they use that to bully trans kids but never when it comes to female athletes getting the same pay or opportunities as their male peers. Super cool
My high school basketball team was better than the boys’ team and yet the stands were full for the dudes and empty for us! There MANY things you can do to support women’s sports that aren’t 1) forcing us to show our genitalia and 2) bullying two trans kids off playing on a team with their friends
Right, only a fool could believe that they care about justice in women's sports when they don't care about justice for women. As usual, the left doesn't know how to counter their calculated insincere concerns.
Seems like a good time to mention that the reason for the sex segregation in sports started because cis men's egos have always been too fragile to handle being bested by cis women, or any other demographic for that matter.
Or ousting abusive coaches, or coaches who sexually assault girls, or...
They can never even name the athletes in women's sports: www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/01/quic... But...yeah, women's field reservations get bumped, sexually abusive coaches get a pass, having to compromise safety for money (e.g. Brittney Griner) and some is just to protect men's egos (e.g. chess)
Remember how differently Trump treated the 2 winning Olympic ice hockey teams- putting the women in the back of the photo and saying “I guess we have to invite the women’s team, too”?? 🙄
One example of how to actually use one's professorial chops for good in the world is from Claudia Goldin, historian-economist-Nobel Prize winner, whose pro-bono advising helped WNBA players secure a 400% pay increase. That's caring about women's sports.
Basically all of this. You can even see it happening RIGHT NOW here in Canada with the World Cup. As much as I'm super proud of our men's team, the media is saying Canada has been doing all these "first" while our women's team have been RIGHT THERE getting it done for the past decade.
The Supreme Court's first decisions are the trans athlete cases. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that Title IX and the equal protection clause do NOT stop states from excluding trans women and girls from female sports teams. The three liberals dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
Kavanaugh's opinion for the court describes transgender women and girls as "biological males" and claims that their exclusion from women's sports teams does not offend Title IX or equal protection because states may insist that only "biological females" play on those teams.
man reporting this stuff has gotta weigh on your soul man. Everyday you’re one of the people informing others of shit like: by a 6-3 ruling the Supreme Court has come up with some fresh dumb shit
I still can't get over that 9 unelected people can rule like this. Court reform doesn't even begin to describe what's needed. #SCOTUS
It's incredible to witness the SCOTUS majority, as they all look at the constitution and say, "I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you though".
Brett Kavanaugh is a cisgender male sexual assaulter.
Hey SCOTUS, can you monitor when the children hit puberty? I don’t want to play against kids who are already shaving or menstruating at age 12, it’s so unfair.
Pack the Court or Lose The Republic.
Trans rights forever, and this decision sucks. And, secondarily, if anyone thinks that a ruling like this will only affect trans people, you're more feeble than the rickety reasoning on which this opinion was based.
As disappointing as it is predictable, we all do but the kids in this country deserve so much better than this
my completely non-expert impression on all this + recent rhetoric is that conservatives want to deny trans people are even a class of people who could be experiencing untenable levels employment, housing, healthcare, and education discrimination
A reminder from the tattoo on my arm (and David Lynch). Trans right fucking forever.
SCOTUS is full of bigots. Trans people must be afforded equal protection of the laws or they are not full citizens. The republican party is too far gone, but there are democrats who are buying into this shit and they need to be bullied and shamed.
But they’re just asking questions right. They just have some concerns right. Fuck every single person who told me I was being unreasonable by refusing to entertain these people. The middle of the road DOESN’T WORK. Pick a side and defend it like you fucking mean it.
This decision, and the rhetoric in the opinion, is so gross and ghoulish and indefensible that future generations are going to look back and wonder how these justices could be so wrong and so hateful. It’s Plessy v. Ferguson type of evil and I hope an after life exists so they can burn in hell.
This country is such a damn mess.
Decision is 9-0 on Title IX. On Equal Protection, the entire argument was focused on the wrong claim ("it's a violation of equal protection to ban *all* biological males from women's sports, rather than only cis ones"), which made it a "you're discriminating against some biological males" claim
To emphasize a point Snitty makes in her thread: Excluding trans kids from sports is about cutting them out of public life. The lies people pushed about "fairness" were a thin cover for anti-trans bigotry. For most athletes sports are about socialization. They're taking that away from trans kids.
All the benefits of sport for young women, such as activity and health benefits and socialization and personal growth, go double for trans kids. These are the _last_ kids we need to exclude from sport.
This is exactly the point and pursuit of reactionaries. Bigots know that most people are cool with gay or trans people etc, so their only recourse is to legally marginalize them. Hyper-focusing on wedge issues is the only path forward for them on this matter, so don't buy into their nonsense.
Quick read of the trans sports decision.. *Categorical exclusion of trans athletes from sex-separated school sports is lawful under Title IX and equal protection *A biological-sex law is not a transgender classification *No as-applied challenges under intermediate scrutiny or rational basis
The last one, no as applied challenges, just took a sledgehammer to constitutional protections for everyone. It will eliminate individual circumstances in constitutional civil rights cases and will do damage in litigation that has nothing to do with trans rights.
Wow, the worst possible outcome for us, who could’ve guessed
This has been a nonissue but the alt right poured billions into making people believe it’s a huge issue just like any other problem that isn’t really a problem
Cue the MAGATs lining up to check your child's genitals before every sporting event.
Last day of Pride. Not a coincidence. They do this now to break you. Do not give up. There will be a reckoning.
Appalling decision. An affront to humanity itself.
I'm not a lawyer but that fails the smell test
Fuuuck it's all bad but that last one is awful news for the long term too.
It’s a little galling to read Kavanaugh’s majority opinion in the trans athletes case, in which he positions himself as a white-knight defender of women’s equal education access and Title IX.
One wonders if Brett Kavanaugh was protecting Debbie Ramirez’ right to access education free from sex discrimination when he allegedly took his dick out and shoved it in her face at a party at Yale.
when rapists tell women the rapist will protect women from the rapists
Kavanaugh is exactly the kind of dude who would’ve dressed up in drag to try sneaking into the girls locker room while his frat bros laughed from behind a nearby bush and now thinks that’s what trans athletes are.
I blew past cynical some while ago but I'm agog at how boldly they are bullshitting here.
Notably, the three liberals did not fully dissent, and concurred that Title IX does not bar states from excluding trans athletes (Sotomayor writes "although on a narrower basis than that on which the majority relies"). They would have found that the laws violated Equal Protection, though.
Quite a coincidence - unrecognized by the SCOTUS justices I'm sure - that there's a mountain of anti-trans policies from the Trump admin in non-athlete realms. But I'm sure they extended that fig leaf somehow, just as they did when they claimed that Trump wasn't racist to Haitians
I'm assuming this is the "states can do things like request testing for hormone levels as a condition of participation" as existed for sports before the anti-trans panic started in earnest
The liberals are sending a signal to Democrats in Congress that it is time to amend and update Title IX. It can be made more inclusive to protect transgender, and it should. But they still found protection in the Constitution under the equal protection clause, and that does mean something.
So they opted for a constitutional objection rather than statutory. No reason not to swing for the fences in a dissent.
Does Title IX actually give states that right, or is it an implication?
SCOTUS decided Dred Scott wrong too. And it was overturned. This will be as well, someday, and this court will go down in history as a shameful one.
Truly abhorrent. We live in a world where vulnerable girls are ostracized and allowed to be removed from their friend groups because a bunch of people who don't know anything about them get to decide they aren't girls. I'm livid
i hate everyone on the supreme court
Trans people are so screwed in America. Title IX was supposed to protect against discrimination "on the basis of sex", including so-called "change of sex" just as changing one's religion is protected. And for decades, it worked that way. Now we're just an example of what could happen to you, too.
Given some of their prior decisions and how they've gone about them that is shameful but not surprising.
At the heart of today’s decision by the Supreme Court (and so many) is whether LGBTQ+ rights are civil rights protected by federal law. The answer is YES—and we will keep fighting until it is clear this is the law of the land! 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Well, our answer is clearly yes, but the Court's answer is clearly no.
the court disagreed, what are you planning on doing about it
let us not forget just yesterday they granted your convicted felon more unchecked power over all 3 branches
The court’s answer was a resounding NO
no, not "lgbtq+ rights," this decision was explicitly about trans rights. we just had more of those rights stripped away while you democrats do fuck all to help us.
tysm. it's a ridiculously small number of people to be getting so much hate!
Gov. Jeff Landry claims SCOTUS' trans sports ruling will result in "sports going in the toilet" in blue states because "nobody wants to sit there and watch a track meet where great male athletes compete against women athletes"
He's not very smart, is he?
They do not understand anything about how HRT works. They've bought into a false conservative narrative that is rooted in fear and not science.
I remember Bobby Riggs getting he ass beat by Billie Jean King.
Sorry I can’t pay attention to what he’s saying with that crowd behind him… all those people are too distracting.
These fuckers HATE women's sports and always have. Now they want to pretend otherwise. Fuck them.
Could have stopped at “nobody wants to sit there and watch a track meet”
how STUPID do you have to be? even the NCAA president testified in front of congress that he only knew of 10 transgender athletes out of more than 500K college athletes competing today F*&K YOU LANDRY TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS 🏳️⚧️ PERIOD
He says while sitting in front of an empty Republican fair.
One thing that will happen is that participation in sports is going to plummer because - I'd argue - majority of cis girls will not want strangers inspecting their genitals.
I ran D1 track and can safely report that gender has absolutely nothing to do with peoples' lack of interest in watching track meets
Trans lives matter. Trans people will always be here. I’m sending a ton of love to every trans person. 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️ I’m sickened to see the deliberate, coordinated, & federal assault on the lives of trans people. The SCOTUS ruled 6-3 to uphold state bans on trans athletes, but it doesn’t require them. 1/
INBOX — @tnequality STATEMENT on reacts the Supreme Court’s new ruling on trans athletes: “Erodes the intent and protections of the 14th amendment”
They are saying that it's okay to teach girls that they are weaker and less capable then boys.
Nothing says they stand for freedom like limiting the freedom of trans people. And it says even more about them as people because the whole trans athlete debate was invented by neonazis. So they’re signaling that the court’s been captured by fascist ideology. Equal is fairness, separate isn’t equal.
What is this obsession they have with this?