Justice Clarence Thomas blasts transgender rhetoric as a ‘lie’ in biting Supreme Court opinion
See more of our coverage in your search results.
WASHINGTON — Republican-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas tore into transgenderism as a “lie to the public” in his concurrence on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold state-level policies restricting girls’ sports to biological females.
The senior justice went further than all of his conservative peers in making the sweeping pronouncement on transgenderism and declared biological sex “immutable.”
“Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic,” Thomas wrote in his brief, two-page solo concurrence.
“[I]t is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex,” he stressed. “To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’— is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens ‘as equal[s].'”
Thomas, 78, fully agreed with the majority opinion, which upheld Idaho’s and West Virginia’s bans on transgender women competing in girls’ sports.
But he went a few steps further and found that transgenderism isn’t a protected legal class, which, in court terms, means that they aren’t a group historically subjected to discrimination that gets critical protections under past Supreme Court decisions.
The majority opinion declined to opine on that either way.
“A man does not have a legal right to compete against women just because he believes that he is a woman,” Thomas declared. “The class of people who claim transgender status could more accurately be described as people who are experiencing ‘gender dysphoria,’ which is not a ‘discrete group.’”
Right now, the Supreme Court recognizes race, religion, and national origin as classes. There is a legal debate over whether transgenderism should be added to that list, but the high court has repeatedly sidestepped that question.
In the majority opinion, Republican-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh used careful language about transgender people, referring to the plaintiffs as “transgender” instead of “biological males” and appearing to deliberately avoid using their pronouns.
“Those student athletes want to play sports. Their desire to compete warrants respect. No student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified,” Kavanaugh, who coached his daughters’ basketball teams, stressed.
The majority opinion effectively left the decision of whether or not transgender girls can compete in girls’ sports up to state legislators, meaning that places like California can still allow transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports, while states like Idaho can enact bans.
The three Democrat-appointed justices had agreed in that judgment, but much more narrowly based on federal law, and declined to make a constitutional ruling as the majority did, which would’ve left the door open to further evaluation.
Thomas is the senior justice, which means that when Chief Justice John Roberts is in the minority, he gets to choose who writes the majority opinion.