<![CDATA[Civil Rights]]><![CDATA[Congress]]><![CDATA[Democrat Party]]><![CDATA[Education]]><![CDATA[Lawsuit]]><![CDATA[Sports]]><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]><![CDATA[Title IX]]><![CDATA[Transgender]]><![CDATA[Women's Sports]]>Featured

Dem. Congresspersons Argue in a Brief That the Supreme Court Should End Women’s Sports (A Deep Dive) – Twitchy

admin
December 12, 2025
0Points
0
1
Dem. Congresspersons Argue in a Brief That the Supreme Court Should End Women’s Sports (A Deep Dive) – Twitchy

Yep, it is time for another patented Aaron Walker Legal Deep DiveTM. We are going to dig pretty deep into legal issues related to a case and a brief before the Supreme Court. So, if that is not your thing, that’s cool! Not everyone likes the same things. Thus, this is your warning to click away and read one of the many other fine stories Twitchy has to offer this morning that’s a lot shorter.





Still with us? Okay, let’s dig in.

At the moment, the Supreme Court is considering whether transgender students have a right to play sports with people of the opposite sex in two cases: Little v. Hecox and W. Virginia v. B.P.J. 

Beavis and Butt-Head voice: ‘Huh, huh. He-cox. The guy who says he is a girl is named He-cox.’

Immature jokes aside, via Corey DeAngelis, we learned that a group of Democratic Congresscritters have filed what is called an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in those consolidated cases:

And of course, some legal nerd had a question for him and he was kind enough to answer:

What a nerd, right?!?

Anyway, Mr. DeAngelis links to a press release that links to the amicus brief. So, an initial, natural question is, what is an amicus brief? Well, we have explained the term before:

Amicus briefs are briefs written by third parties who are not officially part of the case, but believe they have something to contribute to the argument.

What we didn’t mention before is that there is a certain, ‘special’ kind of amicus brief where it really doesn’t offer anything of substance, and really the only purpose is to say

I am an important person (or we are an important group of people), and I (or we) want to tell you what my (our) position is because I am (we are) so important you should listen to me (us) because I am (we are) so very important.

Yes, it can be that snotty and tedious, and of course it commits the fallacy of argument from false authority. Honestly, the Supreme Court should put a stop to these endless amicus briefs, and limit them to briefs that are genuinely informative. But so far the Supreme Court hasn’t listened to us, so here we are.

In any case, that’s what Mr. DeAngelis shared with us—an amicus where the arguments aren’t as important as who is making them. And the list of Congresscritters who has officially signed on to it represents a long list of looney Democrats. In no particular order (except we were doing a dirty cut and paste from the end of the brief) they are:

Senators:

Tammy Baldwin

Mazie K. Hirono

Edward Markey

Jeff Merkley

Patty Murray

Alex Padilla

Adam Schiff

Elizabeth Warren

Ron Wyden

 

Representatives:

Pete Aguilar

Gabe Amo

Yassamin Ansari

Becca Balint

Nanette Barragán

Joyce Beatty

Wesley Bell

Donald S. Beyer Jr.

Suzanne Bonamici

Shontel M. Brown

Julia Brownley

Salud Carbajal

André Carson

Greg Casar

Sean Casten

Judy Chu

Gilbert R. Cisneros, Jr.

Katherine M. Clark

Emanuel Cleaver, II

Steve Cohen

Joe Courtney

Angie Craig

Jasmine Crockett

Sharice L. Davids

Danny K. Davis

Madeleine Dean

Diana DeGette

Rosa L. DeLauro

Suzan K. DelBene

Chris Deluzio

Mark DeSaulnier

Maxine Dexter, M.D.

Lloyd Doggett

Sarah Elfreth

Veronica Escobar

Adriano Espaillat

Dwight Evans

Lizzie Fletcher

Bill Foster

Valerie P. Foushee

Maxwell Alejandro Frost

Jesús G. ‘Chuy’ García

Robert Garcia

Sylvia R. Garcia

Jimmy Gomez

Al Green

Jared Huffman

Glenn Ivey

Sara Jacobs

Pramila Jayapal

Hakeem Jeffries

Henry C. ‘Hank’ Johnson, Jr.

Julie E. Johnson

Sydney Kamlager Dove

William R. Keating

Robin L. Kelly

Ro Khanna

Raja Krishnamoorthi

Greg Landsman

Rick Larsen

George Latimer

Summer L. Lee

Teresa Leger

Fernández

Sam T. Liccardo

Ted W. Lieu

Stephen F. Lynch

Doris Matsui

Sarah Tim McBride

Back to the list of Representatives:

April McClain Delaney

Jennifer McClellan

Betty McCollum

James P. McGovern

LaMonica McIver

Rob Menendez

Gwen S. Moore

Kelly Morrison

Kevin Mullin

Jerrold Nadler

Eleanor Holmes Norton

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

Ilhan Omar

Frank Pallone, Jr.

Chris Pappas

Nancy Pelosi

Scott H. Peters

Brittany Pettersen

Chellie Pingree

Mark Pocan

Mike Quigley

Delia C. Ramirez

Emily Randall

Jamie Raskin

Luz Rivas

Deborah K. Ross

Andrea Salinas

Linda T. Sánchez

Mary Gay Scanlon

Jan Schakowsky

Bradley S. Schneider

Hillary Scholten

Robert C. ‘Bobby’ Scott

Terri A. Sewell

Lateefah Simon

Adam Smith

Eric Sorensen

Mark Takano

Shri Thanedar

Mike Thompson

Rashida Tlaib

Jill N. Tokuda

Paul D. Tonko

Ritchie Torres

Lori Trahan

Lauren Underwood

Juan Vargas

Nydia M. Velázquez

James R. Walkinshaw

Maxine Waters

Bonnie Watson

Coleman

Nikema Williams

Frederica S. Wilson

Recommended

That would be slightly over half of the Democratic representatives and one fifth of the senators. Still, one wonders why so many in their caucus sat this brief out. Indeed, Eleanor Holmes Norton is not even an actual voting member of Congress.

But there’s also a funny thing about it. The title is for this piece not an exaggeration. They have—intentionally or not—argued that basically there shouldn’t be separate men’s and women’s sports at all.

As a starting point, let’s label what we currently have for what it is: segregation between men/boys and women/girls. As we wrote when fisking Jon Oliver over the issue of transgender in sports:

It used to be that a great deal of our society was segregated by race. We had separate bathrooms, separate sports leagues, separate schools and, really, separate nearly everything according to race (at least in the South), but we correctly came to see that as deeply wrong.

And while many state institutions that were segregated by sex have been abolished—basically the Supreme Court doesn’t uphold single-sex public schools anymore—we have retained sex segregation in bathrooms, prisons, sports and so on.

And the Supreme Court has not only failed to see this sex segregation as wrong, but they have actually encouraged it. For instance, in United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996) the Supreme Court held that the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) could not exclude women anymore. But even then, in an opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsberg no less, the Supreme Court noted that

Admitting women to VMI would undoubtedly require alterations necessary to afford members of each sex privacy from the other sex in living arrangements[.]

The Supreme Court never doubted for a moment that men and women should be given separate living quarters.

Bluntly, most of the time when someone says that a transgender person should be allowed to invade the privacy of women or take away their opportunities (particularly in sports), we ask the transactivist something like this ‘do you support separating men and women in this fashion at all? Under any circumstances? Under any definition of ‘men’ and ‘women?’ Or do you think we should end this segregation between men and women entirely?’ We literally can’t remember when any transactivist answered that question directly.

Because here’s the thing. That is the one of the most basic questions in this debate. Indeed, it was the question in a brilliant Eleventh Circuit opinion in a case called Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, 57 F.4th 791 (11th Cir. 2022) by Barbara Lagoa (who also writes a concurrence to her own majority opinion). You can read along, here, and it is a banger:

There the question was whether being allegedly transgender meant that you had a right to use the bathroom of the opposite sex, either under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The answer in that case was ‘no.’ Whatever you called yourself, men had no right to invade women’s bathrooms, and vice versa.

On appeal, Adams argues that the School Board’s bathroom policy violates both the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX. At its core, Adams’s claim is relatively straightforward. According to Adams, the School Board’s bathroom policy facially discriminates between males and females. Adams, who identifies as a male, argues that the policy violates Adams’s rights because, as a transgender student, Adams cannot use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex with which Adams identifies. Which is to say, Adams argues that by facially discriminating between the two sexes, the School Board’s bathroom policy also necessarily discriminates against transgender students. We disagree with Adams’s theory that separation of bathrooms on the basis of biological sex necessarily discriminates against transgender students.

Indeed, when we apply first principles of constitutional and statutory interpretation, this appeal largely resolves itself. The Equal Protection Clause claim must fail because, as to the sex discrimination claim, the bathroom policy clears the hurdle of intermediate scrutiny and because the bathroom policy does not discriminate against transgender students. The Title IX claim must fail because Title IX allows schools to separate bathrooms by biological sex. We now begin our full analysis with the Equal Protection Clause and end with Title IX.





(Footnotes omitted.) In other words, this Court is asking the question we did above: Should this segregation exist at all, and if so, why?

Turning to the constitutional question, because the policy that Adams challenges classifies on the basis of biological sex, it is subject to intermediate scrutiny. To satisfy intermediate scrutiny, the bathroom policy must (1) advance an important governmental objective and (2) be substantially related to that objective. … The bathroom policy clears both hurdles because the policy advances the important governmental objective of protecting students’ privacy in school bathrooms and does so in a manner substantially related to that objective.

(Footnotes and citation omitted.) So what the important governmental objective? Privacy, duh. Indeed, the opinion cites another passage from Ginsburg:

And even the more generally acceptable notion that the protection of individual privacy will occasionally require some segregation between the sexes is beyond doubt—as then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted, ‘[s]eparate places to disrobe, sleep, [and] perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy.’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Fear of the Equal Rights Amendment, Wash. Post, Apr. 7, 1975, at A21 (emphasis added).

(Italics changed to boldface.) But while we will skip over a lot of it, we think this passage is key:

Finally, we turn to the dissent’s contention that, despite all indications to the contrary, this case is not a case about ‘the legality of separating bathrooms by sex,’ which is primarily advanced by Judge Jill Pryor’s dissent but also is discussed in Judge Jordan’s dissent. … As such, the dissent claims that this case is about the exclusion of Adams, as ‘a boy,’ from the male bathrooms in which the School Board restricts access to ‘biological boys.’ … 

Thus, despite the dissent’s suggestion, the district court did not make a finding equating gender identity as akin to biological sex. Nor could the district court have made such a finding that would have legal significance. To do so would refute the Supreme Court’s longstanding recognition that ‘sex, like race and national origin, is an immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth.’  … Regardless of Adams’s genuinely held belief about gender identity—which is not at issue—Adams’s challenge to the bathroom policy revolves around whether Adams, who was ‘determined solely by the accident of birth’ to be a biological female—is allowed access to bathrooms reserved for those who were ‘determined solely by the accident of birth’ to be biologically male. Thus, we are unpersuaded by the dissent’s argument that the district court could make any factual finding (that would not constitute clear error) to change an individual’s immutable characteristic of biological sex, just as the district court could not make a factual finding to change someone’s immutable characteristic of race, national origin, or even age for that matter. Simply put, and contrary to the dissent’s claims, this is a case about the constitutionality and legality of separating bathrooms by biological sex because it involves an individual of one sex seeking access to the bathrooms reserved for those of the opposite sex. Adams’s gender identity is thus not dispositive for our adjudication of Adams’s equal protection claim.

In other words, Adams is a girl. She might claim to think of herself as a boy, but she is still a girl. And no lower court could find that Adams is a boy, because she is not one. And, thus, the question is whether or not the school could exclude girls from the boys’ bathrooms, regardless of how the girl sees herself. 

They aren’t discriminating against Adams because she is transgender. Indeed, what she is asking for is special treatment because of her transgender status.

Indeed, regular readers know by now that viewpoint discrimination is forbidden in virtually every context under the First Amendment. We have hammered that point home repeatedly. Well, beliefs about your so-called ‘gender identity’ is a viewpoint. This author was born a man and considers himself a man. That is a viewpoint. A man who says he is somehow a woman also has a viewpoint. We think that this is a looney viewpoint, but it is still a viewpoint. 





So, basically, Adams is asking the school to treat students differently based on their viewpoint. A girl who thinks she is a girl can’t go into a boy’s restroom, but a girl who at least says she is a boy can, under her proposed rule. That is obvious viewpoint discrimination. Thus Adams was actually asking the government to violate the First Amendment rights of every other student.

So, what does this have to do with the Congresscritters’ amicus before the Supreme Court?

Well, just like the Adams case dealt with a claim that this was about transgender issues, this was actually a direct attack on sex segregation in sports. There aren’t a lot of facts to talk about in the Supreme Court cases. In both West Virginia and Idaho they passed laws that stopped allowing boys to play in girls sports and vice versa because they claim to be transgender. In both cases, a boy wanted to play in girls sports and wasn’t allowed to because of this law.

Which goes to show a certain level of stupidity on the part of these transactivists. In the Adams case, they were smart enough to use a girl who claimed to be a boy to try to tear down the sex segregation in bathrooms. Most of us intuitively understand that there is a difference between letting a girl use a boy’s bathroom versus a boy using a girls’ bathroom. As we said previously:

[We were more concerned about men invading women’s privacy and invading safe spaces for women] because I truly believe in what I half-jokingly call ‘justified sexism.’ Men and women are different and I believe the law can and should acknowledge that. For instance, one of the major reasons why I support sex segregation in private spaces or in prison is because the vast majority of people convicted of rape or sexual assault are men. For instance, the United States Sentencing Commission states that ‘93.8% of individuals sentenced for sexual abuse were men.’ Obviously saying ‘the vast majority of rapists are men’ is not the same as saying ‘the vast majority of men are rapists.’ Still, that alone is more than enough reason to justify sex segregation in bathrooms, locker rooms and prisons.

So, the people behind the Adams case were smartly avoiding that issue for the time being. Meanwhile, in our view the same ‘justified sexism’ applied in men’s favor in sports:

And I think justified sexism also justifies saying that men should be kept out of women’s sports, but women should not be kept out of men’s sports. I justified keeping men out of women’s sports because I think men enjoy an advantage over women in most sports. If there is any sport where women enjoy natural, inherent advantages over men, I’m not aware of it. So, some blatant sex discrimination is fully justified…. That is, in my perfect world, men would not be allowed to play in the WNBA, but women would be allowed to play in the (male) NBA. Yes, I already told you I think women are at a disadvantage in that sport, but I have always believed that if a woman wants to try, she should be allowed to. She shouldn’t be given any special consideration (beyond having a separate locker room from the men), but if she can ‘wear the pants’ I say let her.

So, the activists behind these cases—and we have no doubt that activists are behind these cases—created a case with bad facts. They should have had a girl who was only five foot one trying to get on the high school basketball team, or something like that. In other words, they should have made sure that by the facts, there was little chance that she would have an unfair advantage if she played in men’s sports.

Of course, the courts have not yet embraced our theory of justified sexism. Right now, they will pretend that the sexes are equal in these two areas, when most regular people know we are not. But don’t think for a moment that these justices actually think the two sexes are the same on these subjects—they are just reluctant to officially put it into any opinion.

(And who knows? Maybe they will finally admit to the obvious in this case.)





But putting that strategic consideration aside, the amicus claims that it is only advocating for transgender persons to play in sports with the opposite sex, but just about every argument they make applies equally if a person who doesn’t suffer from the transgender delusion wants to play in sports with the opposite sex. For instance, they write:

Several [other] Amici heard directly from transgender girls who would have been impacted by a federal categorical ban on transgender students participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity. These girls shared that they participate in school sports for the same reasons as many children do: to be part of a community, spend time with their friends, learn sportsmanship, and challenge themselves.

So you got that? Boys who claim they are girls want to play with girls because they want to: ‘to be part of a community, spend time with their friends, learn sportsmanship, and challenge themselves.’ But what part of that doesn’t apply to boys who think they are boys—so called ‘cis’ boys?

Are these Congresscritters claiming that boys who believe they are boys can’t also want to be part of a community that includes girls and vice versa? (We knew several boys who took Home Economics for precisely this reason, particularly for dating purposes.)

Are they claiming that boys who believe they are boys can’t want to spend time with friends who happen to be girls and vice versa?

Thus, both of those reasons apply just as much for so-called ‘cis’ boys as boys who claim to think they are girls.

And, of course, learning sportsmanship and challenging themselves is defeated by letting boys play with girls. We think letting a boy invade a girls’ sports team is a form of cheating no different than abusing performance-enhancing drugs, and, naturally, cheating reduces the challenge they face. ‘Lia Thomas’ doesn’t face nearly as much of a challenge as William Thomas did back when he admitted he was just a dude.

And those latter two problems apply equally whether the boy says he thinks he is a girl or not.

So, every single argument applies with just as much force if the boy who wants to invade girls’ sports is not claiming to be transgender. Therefore, every argument these Congresscritters make in favor of allowing so called ‘transgender girls’ (meaning boys) to invade girls’ sports applies equally to letting boys who know they are boys invade girls sports. The only real difference is the viewpoint of the person who wants to do the invading, meaning whether this boy thinks he is a boy or not. And, once again, viewpoint discrimination is forbidden by the First Amendment.

As if that’s not bad enough, these Democrats’ brief engages in a full-on assault on sex segregation arguing that it is already really deeply unfair to women:

Girls already had 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sports than boys in 2019–2020. WOMEN’S SPORTS FOUNDATION, ‘Do You Know the Factors Influencing Girls’ Participation in Sports?’ [Internet citation] (last visited Oct. 28, 2025). And male athletes receive a quarter of a billion dollars more than female athletes in athletic scholarships each year. WOMEN’S SPORTS FOUNDATION, ‘Report: 50 Years of Title IX We’re Not Done Yet’ (May 13, 2022) [Internet citation].

None of that is an argument for letting a boy destroy girls’ opportunities if they say they believe they are girls. But it is an argument for ending the segregation between girls and boys in sports entirely.

Additionally, they also make another argument: keeping boys out of women’s sports is harmful to actual girls and women because it leads to people asking whether or not a teammate who is allegedly a girl is really a girl. Yes, really. From their press release:

categorical bans harm all girls and women—including cisgender girls and women—through harassment and policing of children’s ‘reproductive biology;’

Now, it can be ugly when a girl who is actually a girl is accused of being a boy because she is ‘too manly.’ But Democrats should ask themselves, whose fault is this? This wasn’t a problem when this author was growing up because people overwhelmingly respected sex segregation in sports. We are not saying no boy ever faked being a girl a la ‘Juwanna Mann…’





…but it was so exceptionally rare for boys to try to pull that kind of trick, we were probably more likely to meet bigfoot.

It was transactivists that created this problem, when they decided they were entitled to repeatedly break this ubiquitous sex segregation in sports because they decided they were actually of the opposite sex. So they are using the natural consequence of boys invading women’s sports, as a reason to justify more boys invading women’s sports. It’s not quite the level of chutzpah as the proverbial man who killed his parents and pled for mercy in because he was an orphan, but it is close.

And the extra dumb thing is that their position doesn’t even solve the problem they complaining of. They are advocating that rather than having a ‘categorical ban’ that it should be decided on a case-by-case basis—none of which will remove the problem that people will suspect that a particularly manly girl is actually a boy in disguise trying to cheat. Again, the only way to truly eliminate that problem is basically to do away with sex segregation in sports entirely. Then no one will have to worry about a boy sneaking into girls’ sports because there will no longer be such a thing as girls or boys sports—it will just be unisex ‘sports.’ But as long as there is any sex segregation at all—and transactivists who try to breach it—this will be a problem.

In short, these Democratic Congresscritters pretend they are merely making an argument for an exception to the sex segregation in sports. But in truth, their arguments, if taken to their logical conclusion, would lead to the end of sex segregation in sports.

And that, frankly, would reduce the participation of girls and women in sports to practically nothing. Indeed, it would often be physically dangerous to girls and women. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it would expose them to endless harassment. For instance, if girls are forced to play football with boys, how many of the boys would use a tackle as a chance to ‘accidentally’ grab certain parts of their bodies? Remember, this would apply to hormonal teenagers, after all.

(And you might remember that Judge Lagoa concurred with her own opinion in the Adams case. That concurrence was a full throated defense of women’s sports, arguing that the transgender movement was an existential threat to it.) 

The only question that remains with respect to this amicus is … well, are these Congresscritters trying to end all sex segregation in sports, or are they too stupid to understand the issues this well?

We think, in truth, that most politicians have little understanding of the actual policies they advocate. We made that point in reference to John McCain when he was on The View. The man literally didn’t understand that following the Constitution as written meant that slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment! This is conservative constitutional theory 101, folks! And, honestly, we think that most politicians are this way. Among conservatives, we will say that we have only identified Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis as politicians who not only support the correct position most of the time, but understand why they are the correct positions. There may be others, but none come to mind. And we think the same problem infects the left—they don’t know why they hold these positions, they just believe that they have to officially support them to remain in office. So, we are very open to the possibility that none of these people thought of these questions that deeply—they just signed on to a brief written by working lawyers who did all the thinking for them.

But regardless of what they meant to do, this is what they are actually doing. In other words, these Congresscritters might self-identify as only supporting an exception to sex segregation, in reality they are making arguments that would do away with all sex segregation in sports.





And we can just be thankful that we have six conservatives on the Supreme Court. Even if one goes flaky on this issue like Gorsuch did in Bostock, you still have five more—including one woman who very clearly does not like the idea of allowing boys to enter girls’ bathrooms or girls’ sports—to keep the Supreme Court from doing something stupid. (Seriously, go back and listen to the oral arguments on Tennessee’s ban on child transgender surgeries.)

Honestly, that is the other bad tactical decision in this case—besides picking boys who think they are girls: They chose to try to make their case against a Supreme Court about as hostile to their claims as conservatives like us might hope for. And for that, this author thanks them.

RELATED: CNN Dragged For Using Sarah Beckstrom’s Ex-Boyfriend to Attack Trump

An Adjunct Professor at Cornell Law and Army Veteran, Defends Pete Hegseth’s (Alleged) ‘Double Taps’

Pete Hegseth Posts a Fake Children’s Book to Troll the Leftists Crying Over Dead Narco-Terrorists and LOL

Can Donald Trump Refuse to Follow an Unconstitutional Judicial Order? (A Deep Dive)

One ‘Weird Trick’ That Would Instantly Undermine the Political Power of Illegal Immigrants (and Democrats)

BREAKING: An NYT Interview With Biden Just Undermined Thousands of His Late Pardons (A Deep Dive)


Editor’s Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump’s agenda to make America great again.

Help us hold these corrupt judges accountable for their unconstitutional rulings. Join Twitchy VIP today and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.





Source link

admin

Related Posts

1 of 927

TRENDING

Copyright © 2025 right2024 - .
Copyright © 2025 right2024 - .