{"id":6601,"date":"2026-07-06T05:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6601"},"modified":"2026-07-06T05:04:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T05:04:42","slug":"commentary-the-transgender-sports-decision-about-something-deeper-than-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=6601","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: The transgender sports decision about something deeper than law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Read the Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling on transgender athletes \u2014 the majority\u2019s decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the dissent, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor \u2014 and you will see the members of the court arguing about something more fundamental than the law. They are arguing about who should be seen, whose story ought to be heard and who deserves to be protected.<\/p>\n

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Kavanaugh\u2019s opinion contains a long lyrical tribute to female athletes. \u201cThey spend extraordinary time and effort to train in the heat and in the cold, to work out early in the morning and late at night, to get a little faster, to become a little stronger, to jump a little higher, to shoot a little better, to watch a little more video, to make the lonely journey back from an ACL tear, to scrap for playing time, to start, to win the game, to win a championship, to hang a banner, to bring home a medal, to be all-tournament, all-County, all-State or all-American,\u201d he writes. \u201cWhether the star of the team or the last player on the bench, they form lifelong friendships and lifetime memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sotomayor\u2019s dissent, too, includes a description of a young person in love with her sport. Referring to a plaintiff by her initials, Sotomayor writes, \u201cB.P.J.\u2019s mother reports that B.P.J. \u2018has had the time of her life participating on these teams.\u2019 She has watched B.P.J. make close friends and gain a sense of belonging. Her mother recalls taking B.P.J. to practice after hours and on weekends, and often witnessing B.P.J. practicing her form in the backyard \u2018by herself, for hours.\u2019 Above all, her mother explains that B.P.J. \u2018is the happiest I have ever seen her when she is accepted for who she is and able to participate in school sports.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh and Sotomayor are looking at different athletes: He is describing cisgender girls, and Sotomayor is focusing on one of the plaintiffs in the case, a West Virginia high school student named Becky Pepper-Jackson who was excluded from middle school sports after her state enacted legislation banning the inclusion of trans girls in girls\u2019 sports. (When a district court found West Virginia\u2019s law to be probably unconstitutional, Pepper-Jackson joined her school\u2019s track and cross-country teams.)<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh\u2019s argument stresses that everyone deserves to compete on a level playing field. People assigned male at birth have an inherent physical advantage, he writes; they are, on average, taller, bigger, faster and stronger than people assigned female at birth. Making members of these two groups compete with each other is unfair. Pepper-Jackson can join the boys\u2019 team or not participate at all.<\/p>\n

Sotomayor\u2019s argument is also based on the idea that everyone deserves to compete on a level playing field. Pepper-Jackson began taking puberty blockers at age 10, the justice points out, ensuring that she never went through male puberty. At 12 she started hormone replacement therapy, which brought about a typical female puberty. Sotomayor\u2019s colleagues, she said, had reached their decision without considering whether Pepper-Jackson actually had an athletic advantage over other girls.<\/p>\n

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Concern for the physical safety of women and girls is an important part of the court\u2019s decision and a leitmotif in the ongoing attacks on trans rights. The opinion emphasizes that competing with or alongside people the conservative majority insists on calling \u201cbiological males,\u201d especially in contact sports, poses a physical danger to girls. This seems like a reasonable concern, but the logic is convoluted. If males, by virtue of their weight and height and sheer physical strength, pose a risk to women in sports, then putting a trans girl like Pepper-Jackson in an all-male sports environment would \u2014 aside from all the social complications and locker room logistics \u2014 by definition put her in physical danger.<\/p>\n

The question, then, is: Who warrants the court\u2019s protections? The millions of cisgender girls who participate in school sports in this country? The handful of trans girls who wish to take part, too? (Pepper-Jackson is believed to be the only trans girl in her state seeking a spot on a girls\u2019 team.) The answer would seem to be obvious: To the extent that it is possible, both groups should be protected from physical danger and unfair competition.<\/p>\n

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Before West Virginia banned transgender girls from girls\u2019 sports, the state used to handle such matters on a case-by-case basis. If a team objected to the presence of a trans girl on a competitor\u2019s roster, the team could register a complaint, and a board would review the case. Sotomayor, arguing in favor of that approach, reminds the court that it used to believe in viewing people as individuals rather than solely as representatives of a group or a class. She quotes from United States v. Virginia, a 1996 case that forced the Virginia Military Institute to open its admissions to women. In that decision, the court banned \u201cstate action that denies individuals \u2018full citizenship stature,\u2019 or \u2018equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities,\u2019 because of a class to which they happen to belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The majority opinion seems to acknowledge that sport participation is indeed a form of participation in society \u2014 a pathway to that \u201cfull citizenship stature.\u201d Kavanaugh writes that since 1972, when the law first required all schools to give girls a chance to take part in sports, \u201cthose lessons and experiences in sports have empowered millions of American women who have gone on to thrive in all aspects of American life.\u201d Still, he writes, \u201cregulations cannot and do not guarantee every student a spot on a team\u2019s roster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sports can be an instrument of inclusion. So can the law. But in the hands of this court, the principles and practices that were once intended to enfranchise more people often become, instead, tools of exclusion.<\/p>\n

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The question: Who warrants the Supreme Court\u2019s protections? The millions of cisgender girls who participate in school sports? The handful of trans girls who wish to take part? 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