Supreme Court Upholds Transgender Athlete Ban, Birthright Citizenship

Calling this week’s spate of Supreme Court rulings a mixed bag would be an understatement. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on transgender athletes and rejected an effort by the Trump administration to place restrictions on birthright citizenship.

Like I said, a mixed bag.

The Hill reports that in a 6-3 ruling that went along ideological lines, the court upheld an Idaho law that banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. The initial case focused on Becky Pepper-Jackson, a teenage transgender athlete who has identified as a girl since she was in the third grade. While several lower courts struck down the ban, the state appealed the ruling all the way up to the Supreme Court. 

“Sports are generally zero-sum,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in the majority opinion. “Every biological male who makes the team takes a roster spot from a female athlete. Every biological male who earns playing time reduces the playing time of a female athlete. Every biological male who starts takes a starting position from a female athlete. Every biological male who wins a race takes the gold medal away from a female athlete.” 

Trans and LGBTQ activist groups were understandably disappointed in the court’s ruling. 

“Today’s news has nothing to do with safety or fairness in sports,” Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black said in a statement. “These rulings only serve to send a message to transgender and nonbinary young people that says, ‘you don’t belong.’” 

“The Supreme Court gave cover to a campaign whose stated goal is to deny constitutional protections to trans people,” Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media, said in a statement. “The ultimate objective is to establish the cocktail of laws and systemic marginalization that will allow those in power to exclude larger and larger groups of Americans.” 

Trans athletes represent such a small number of the people who compete in student sports, yet that hasn’t stopped it from becoming an issue for the GOP. While the transgender ruling is an objectively terrible way to wind down Pride month, there was some good news with the court’s ruling on birthright citizenship. 

AP reports that the Supreme Court rejected an executive order issued by President Donald Trump that said children born to illegal immigrants or temporary visitors aren’t considered American citizens. In a 6-3 ruling, the court upheld the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship to those born on American soil. 

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling. “We keep that promise today.” 

AP notes that the ruling is hefty, with Justice Clarence Thomas’s 91-page dissent being nearly three times as long as the majority opinion. I tried skimming through, and the man spent so much time litigating the definition of “home.” It’s like he read House of Leaves and said to himself, “This is how I should write my dissents from now on.” 

“The Court today takes the extraordinary step of holding facially unconstitutional the President’s Order excluding from citizenship the children of foreign temporary visitors and illegal aliens,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent. “In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.” 

Does bro realize the Reconstruction Congress was nearly 150 years ago? I’m just saying, maybe modern laws shouldn’t be shaped by the opinions of people who were still dying from dysentery. 

Leaders of several advocacy groups issued statements celebrating the birthright citizenship ruling. 

“Trump’s attempted assault on the 14th Amendment was dealt a major blow today. This decision is a powerful affirmation of the Constitution and the enduring promise of equality it represents,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “For over 150 years, the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed citizenship to everyone born in this country. Today, the court rightly rejected efforts to undermine that core protection and instead upheld a principle that is essential to our democracy.” 

“The Justices rightly recognized that the U.S. Constitution is clear and unambiguous: if you are born in this country and subject to its jurisdiction, you are a citizen of this country,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that works with immigrants, said in a statement. “Birthright citizenship survived the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow, and today, it survived an executive order that would have essentially turned the maternity ward into a customs checkpoint.” 

Tuesday was the final day of the Supreme Court’s current term, with the next one set to begin in October. I, for one, can’t wait to see what new and exciting ways the court tries to make Trump a king. 

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Every Supreme Court Ruling That Impacted Black Americans This Week

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