(c) The Court rejects B. P. J.’s two other Title IX-related arguments. B. P. J. contends that the school’s policy violates Title IX because the policy effectively excludes B. P. J. from any competitive sports teams at the school. While it is an unhappy occasion whenever a student who wants to play school sports cannot do so, the Title IX regulations guarantee only “equal athletic opportunity.”

The fuck? Are they saying that equal opportunity can be satisfied by complete exclusion of a group? Doesn’t that basically nullify the foundation of most equal-rights laws in the entire country??

The as-applied argument that the States’ sex-based classification is generally permissible—but not as applied to those biological males such as B. P. J. and Hecox who identify as female and have taken puberty blockers or hormones—fails for the same reasons. Particularly in the sports context, determining the effects of the puberty blockers and hormones taken by transgender athletes—and then comparing each of those transgender athletes’ abilities to those of other individual biological males and individual biological females in the relevant sport—would be an almost impossible task for a judge to perform on an equitable basis. The legislatures and the schools are better equipped—and under the Constitution, are the more appropriate entities—to assess the competing medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines.

This strongly implies that legislation and policy overrules scientific evidence in cases of equal rights

c) The underlying medical and scientific premise of the equal protection challenge here is that at least some biological males who identify a female and take puberty blockers or hormones do not retain physical advantages over biological females. That premise is the subject of ongoing medical and scientific debate. Even if true, that empirical claim would not alter the equal protection conclusion set forth above.

Another, more direct statement that the court believes written law should supercede evidence and facts

@hazelnoot Yes, it does. It’s the logic behind “separate but equal” 🤬

Ratified in 1868, the Equal Protection Clause provides that no State shall deny “to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 14. That command “must coexist with the practical necessity that most legislation classifies for one purpose or another, with resulting disadvantage to various groups or persons.”

This directly attacks the 14th amendment by ruling that discrimination against one group is legal, provided that another group benefits. Which, you know, is usually how discrimination works.

To be sure, the plaintiffs’ as-applied nomenclature and focus on subclasses is a useful construct in equal protection cases to help analyze the relationship between a State’s classification and the State’s asserted interests. Specifically, if a State’s interests do not apply to an especially large subclass within the class specified by the State’s law, then that fact may demonstrate that the relationship between the State’s classification and the State’s interests is not close enough. But as long as the relationship is sufficient as a general matter, the State is not constitutionally required to grant individualized exemptions to specific athletes or subclasses.

“discrimination is ok as long as it’s a small enough group”

But in assessing state and federal laws passed under circumstances of “medical and scientific uncertainty,” this Court has often said that the Judiciary must be cautious about swooping in and invalidating laws. Skrmetti, 605 U. S., at 524 (quotation marks omitted). The legislatures, we have emphasized, maintain “wide discretion to pass legislation” in those circumstances.

This states that constitutional and equal-rights protections can be weakened as long as the subject can be made “controversial” enough.

In any event, the plaintiffs’ premise is the subject of ongoing medical and scientific debate and is not settled in their direction at this time. States and leading athletic organizations disagree with the plaintiffs and have concluded that biological males still retain a physical advantage after taking puberty blockers and hormones. To take one prominent example, the IOC found that “athletes retain Male performance advantage due in part to training effects and fixed traits. There is no current evidence that testosterone suppression or gender-affirming hormone treatment eliminates this advantage.” IOC, Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport and Guiding Considerations for International Federations and Sports Governing Bodies (Mar. 26, 2026).

They describe this as a “medical and scientific debate”, and then quote zero medical or scientific sources to support their argument.

@hazelnoot that vaguely almost sounds like a good thing???????????

???????

@hazelnoot but also not?? weird and i don’t super like it or know

@shroomie only if you trust the state to work in good faith, which it obviously does not or else we wouldn’t need a supreme court in the first place.

@hazelnoot idk tbh. the concept of equal rights is good but it is weird

@hazelnoot well almost as if that was the goal...