
Supreme Court agrees to review bans on transgender athletes joining teams that align with their gender identity
CNN
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to decide whether states may ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, revisiting the issue of LGBTQ rights in a blockbuster case just days after upholding a ban on some health care for trans youth.
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to decide whether states may ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, revisiting the issue of LGBTQ rights in a blockbuster case just days after upholding a ban on some health care for trans youth. The decision puts the issue of transgender rights on the Supreme Court’s docket for the second year in a row and is by far the most significant matter the justices have agreed to hear in the term that will begin in October. In a significant loss for transgender advocates, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court ruled on June 18 that Tennessee could bar trans youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy. Though the state’s law also bars surgeries, they were not at issue in the high court’s case. The court is likely to decide the case by early next summer. The court’s decision landed as transgender advocates are still reeling from the 6-3 ruling in US v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee’s ban on some gender identity care for trans minors. But that decision was limited to questions of whether the state had the power to regulate medical treatments for minors, leaving unresolved challenges to other anti-trans laws. The justices agreed to review two cases challenging sports bans in Idaho and West Virginia. The court didn’t act on a third appeal over a similar ban in Arizona.

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












