Embarrassing: The SCOTUS Decision on States' Ability To Organize Sports By Sex Revealed There Is No Debate On This Topic

The Losing Side Argued BPJ a Special Boy/Girl Because He Says So and He Should Participate In Girls' Sports Because He Wants To. They Didn't Defend Hecox At All

Drowning in the media firehose that followed the Supreme Court decision to allow states to organize sports by sex, I found it clarifying to step away from the relentless spittle spray and take some time to read the actual document. It’s not byte-sized but it is worth the time: I encourage you to read it and draw your own conclusions. Because as you guessed, mine are coming up.

I was reminded, from the first paragraph of Kavanaugh’s majority opinion to the last of Jackson’s dissent, of World Rugby science and research consultant Ross Tucker’s experience in crafting that organization’s policy for eligibility for women’s teams. He and other advisors set up a panel of experts representing both sides of the issue—those who supported the inclusion of men who identified as women and those who supported a female-only category. Each side had the opportunity to present their arguments to the committee, like in a court of law, so the committee could weigh the evidence side-by-side and make an informed decision. Tucker recounted that by the morning coffee break on the first day of “testimony,” committee members who had previously been either uninformed or undecided commented that they could not believe the difference in the strength of the arguments. It was startling, they said: One side used scientific evidence and rationality; the other side relied only on emotion. Committee members hadn’t realized until they listened to the arguments in juxtaposition that the “debate” was not a debate at all. They had no problem deciding that the women’s category should be restricted to natal females.

It’s important to know that “listening to the experts on both sides” was, purposely, not employed when state high school sports associations, the NCAA, the IOC, and nearly all sports organizations first allowed males in female sports more than a decade ago. On the contrary, when faced with creating a “transgender policy,” these organizations wrongly identified athletes with trans identities as the only stakeholders, so they typically consulted only trans rights activists and athletes with trans identities, with predictable results.

I too was shocked by the difference in the strength of the arguments, between the majority opinions, written by Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Gorsuch, and the dissenting opinions written by Sotomayor and Jackson. One side used accurate language, scientific evidence, and rationality to consider the rights of girls and boys with trans identities. The other side focused solely on the feelings of male litigants, made ideological claims with no evidence, and relied on emotion and absurd straw man arguments. Sotomayor et al’s arguments boiled down to BJP is a special boy/girl because he says so (and so does his mother), and he should be allowed to participate in girls’ sports because he wants to. That’s it. Nothing more.

The dissenting opinions lacked, not just evidence and mature reason, but a firm grasp on reality. It was hard to believe their’s was an issuance of the highest court in our country, and not a transcript from Wind in the Willows Elementary School’s debate club. Having waded through the whole document, having digested both sides, my overwhelming takeaway is that I can’t believe there is any debate on this at all. It’s that one-sided. I support this conclusion with excerpts from the original document.

Kavanaugh started out by talking about the purpose of Title IX:

To provide equal opportunity for female athletes, schools do not merely maintain, for example, one soccer team, one basketball team, one ice hockey team, and one lacrosse team that are equally open to female and male athletes. That approach would deny equal opportunity to female athletes because, as all agree, females and males have inherent physical differences relevant to athletic performance.

Right away, he identified the stakeholders in this discussion as girls, and that well documented sex differences were the reason schools maintained separate male and female sports teams. Throughout his opinion, he used accurate language, referring to BPJ and Lindsay Hecox as “biological males who identify as female.” This made the opinion easy to read, understandable, and frankly, believable. As if it came from an informed objective source.

May schools determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex? The answer is yes.

Kavanaugh credits single-sex sports with empowering millions of American women to thrive in all aspects of life. In sharp contrast to almost all discussion of males in female sports in all major media but in alignment with the views of the vast majority of Americans, opportunity and access to sports for women and girls is the focus of his opinion.

Kavanaugh referenced the extensive research that led the NCAA and the IOC to restrict women’s sports to females only, pointing to the research that shows that tinkering with hormones does not eliminate male advantage. He calls BPJ and Hecox “biological males who identifies as female,” and pointed out that though BPJ had taken puberty blocker and cross-sex hormones, he won the West Virginia state title in shot put, finished fourth in the state discus competition, and had won both events at the region level.

BPJ argued that, while it was fine for WV schools to organize male and female teams, since he had headed off male puberty with drugs, he, as a biological male (Kavanaugh never accedes that BPJ IS female) who never went through male puberty, has no advantage in sports, and should he be given an exception to participate in girls’ sports. BPJ argued that he is, not a female, but a special male who, because he has altered his hormonal profile, should be allowed to participate in female-only sports. Because Hecox went through male puberty and could make no special male claims, he is rarely spoken of in either the majority or the dissenting opinions. Kavanaugh wrote:

As B. P. J. sees things, if the regulations authorize a school to limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females, then the regulations are not “reasonable” and therefore are unlawful. We disagree.

For once—and this is beautiful—Kavanaugh directly addressed both the absurdity of boys (and their parents) who have chosen to make themselves weaker by taking powerful hormones and then claim this choice makes it impossible for them to compete successfully on boys’ teams, AND exposes his core argument for competing on the girls’ teams—because I want to—with this searing statement (emphasis is mine):

B. P. J. has taken puberty blockers and hormones, meaning that B. P. J. apparently will no longer be strong or fast enough to compete successfully against boys. Moreover, B. P. J. might not want to compete against boys. Either way, it is an unhappy occasion whenever a student who wants to play school sports cannot do so. We appreciate the desire of every student, including B. P. J., who wants to play school sports. And we recognize that student-athletes are understandably disappointed and upset when they do not make a team or otherwise cannot participate. But the Title IX regulations guarantee “equal athletic opportunity.” The regulations cannot and do not guarantee every student a spot on a team’s roster.

This is what Myron Genel should have told the two men who had cut off their parts and demanded to compete in women’s Olympic cycling in 2002 or so. This is what EVERY male who has ever demanded to compete in women’s sports should have been told. You made choices. You’re still a man. Them’s the breaks. Man. Kavanaugh acknowledges not only that BPJ’s demand is just that—a demand—but that it’s an “unhappy occasion” when the demander doesn’t get what he wants. Yes, BPJ will be sad. He might not want to compete on the boys’ team, and he may have made himself not competitive with drugs. But that’s not a reason to violate all girls’ rights. Wow. The simplicity, the clarity, the rightness, the adultnesx of this statement—sort of depressing that it took decades and a Supreme Court ruling to hear it.

Directly addressing Sotomayor’s and, by default, every single emotional plea to think of the poor boys that has dominated this discussion, Kavanaugh wrote:

we do not accept the dissent’s [Sotomayor’s] assumed monopoly on understanding the effects on individuals involved in disputes over transgender athletes. We are acutely aware of the difficulties sometimes faced by boys who identify as girls (and by girls who identify as boys) in middle school, high school, and beyond. And we greatly admire the desire of all students, including transgender students such as B. P. J., who want to participate in sports. But in conducting the equal protection inquiry, we must also account for the effects on girls who are forced to compete against biological males in sports.

“Assumed monopoly on understanding.” Burn. Once again, he acknowledges the sad boys but redirects to the real stakeholders—girls. And if you want to talk about feelings—fine. He talks about girls’ feelings of hard work, competitive spirit, team bonding, sense of accomplishment, and how those feelings are crushed when “girls are forced to compete with biological boys.”

Clarence Thomas, not known for his feminism, nonetheless did some beautiful plain speaking about manipulation of language in his concurrence. Citing several scientific papers, he wrote:

Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are….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].”

Gorsuch, in his concurrence, eviscerated Sotomayor’s word salad attempts at twisting the Bostock case into banning males from female sports is discriminatory. He wrote:

Put simply, it is a mistake to assume that, just because firing someone in part because of his biological sex amounts to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title VII, sponsoring a single-sex sports team limited to biological women or girls must also amount to unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX. It’s a point Bostock took care to underscore.

And that’s where adult reason, logic you’d expect from the Supreme Court, ends. And the fourth-grade debate club starts.

Sotomayor’s opinion starts off using the ideological language Thomas said “obscures reality” and “lies to the public.” Her first sentence is:

Respondent B. P. J. is a transgender girl who wants to live her life consistent with her gender identity.

Describing BPJ as a “transgender girl,” Sotomayor does indeed obscure reality and lie to the public. She presented no evidence that BJP has “transitioned” or is a “girl.” She used a slogan as fact. She goes on to claim that because BPJ has altered his hormones, he has no male advantage:

…never experienced an endogenous male puberty, who receive gender-affirming treatment, and who, as a result of both, B. P. J. says, lack any athletic advantage that is inherent to their sex identified at birth.

The authority for this bold statement? The litigant says so. Give your head a shake, wipe your face Three Stooges-style, and try to remember this is written by a Supreme Court justice. Nevermind that Greg Brown, James Nuzzo, and about 65 years of school fitness tests have proven that measurable male advantage exists before puberty. Sotomayor could easily have availed herself of this data, but chose instead to just ask BPJ if he had any advantage. Yikes.

Sotomayor furthers her elementary school opinion by claiming the mean majority just “favor cisgender” girls and women, and “disfavor” transgender girls. They like girls, and they don’t like trans girls, so that’s why they upheld Title IX. Trans girls are, like, not even their fifth best friend. Read and wonder:

the majority extends great sympathy to those it favors: the young cisgender girls and women who play sports…Because the majority, however, inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions, I respectfully dissent.

Sotomayor accuses dumb mean people of defining biological sex as “an individual’s physical form as a male or female based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” Which seems pretty correct. She doesn’t give a smart nice person definition of biological sex though.

In describing what a happy normal child BPJ is, Sotomayor wrote:

she began taking a form of estrogen to facilitate a typical female hormonal puberty.

Except that’s a great big lie. Starting with taking exogenous estrogen, there is no part of BPJ’s experience that was “typical” or “female.” And remember, this messing with cross-sex hormones is the heart of Sotomayor’s argument, that BPJ never went through male puberty, thus has no advantage and is a “girl.” You’d think she might have tried to bolster this key point with even some pseudoscience, but nope.

Sotomayor’s expert source to explain why BPJ shouldn’t have to compete with the boys’ track and field team was…wait for it…BPJ’s mother!

She did so because it would be inconsistent with her gender identity to play sports with boys. In fact, doing the latter would be quite harmful to her: Among other things, as her mother explains, it would “further isolate, stigmatize, and erase her.”

I guess neither BPJ’s mother nor Sotomayor read the 2025 Washington Post story about male high school student Eliza Munshi who identified as a girl. Munshi started in the spring on the girls track team in Falls Church, Virginia, but early in the season, Virginia restored their policy of single-sex sports. Munshi then joined the boys’ track team, and told the Washington Post, “everyone at her school has continued to make her feel welcome. ‘Sometimes I forget I’m transgender. People around me forget too.’ Munshi’s identity was unharmed. He was unharmed. He had friends of both sexes on the team, and enjoyed the camaraderie, sense of belonging, and pride in accomplishments that sports are known to provide. Munshi was not “isolated, stigmatized, or erased.”

BPJ’s mother was simply conjecturing this egregious harm would happen if her son was forced to participate on the boys’ track team, since her son had never participated on any boys’ team. She was making it up. Why? Why did she and her son assume such hateful behavior from boys? Why were they so bigoted toward other boys? Had they ever met any boys? Why were they male-phobic?

Even if Sotomayor had not read about Eliza Munshi, she surely must have been aware of Olympians Nikki Hiltz (US track star) and Swedish skier Elis Lundholm, both females who identify as not-female (I can’t say for sure what Hiltz’s identity really is; that’s only for her to know) but who have always competed in women’s sports. Observers, me among them, have wondered out loud why these two outstanding female athletes have not suffered the erasure, the dehumanization, the spontaneous combustion that BPJ’s mother, and apparently Sotomayor, insist will happen if kids with cross-sex identities compete in their sex category. Several decades of lack of evidence of harm supports my assessment that Sotomayor, a Supreme Court Justice, I have to remind you, put forward bullshit as her argument. Because it’s handy and well-used, and sounds better than saying BPJ was suing the state of West Virginia because he just wants to play on the girls’ team. Because he wants to. That’s the argument.

Not only pretty weak, but quite short. As a Supreme Court Justice, Sotomayor knew she had to fluff up her two killer points—he’s a girl because he says so (and so does his mother) and he should be in girls’ sports because he wants to (his mother says so too). So she kept repeating that BPJ is a dear sweet girl who has no advantage and is no threat to girls. It would have been stronger, or might have brought this opinion up to a fourth-grade level, if she’d presented evidence for any of these claims. But she didn’t.

The solid B student at East Buttwhistle Elementary/Supreme Court lifer spent many excruciating paragraphs giving examples of when the legal system did or did not create exceptions to a rule in an attempt to hammer home a thoroughly debunked notion—that messing with a boy’s endocrine system when he’s real young renders him weak enough to compete fairly in girls’ sports. THE ONLY scientific evidence—and there’s a lot of it—points to just the opposite. From age four (subjects younger than four have trouble following test instructions, and may need a nap), boys are bigger, stronger, faster, have greater endurance, and can throw farther and more accurately than girls. BEFORE PUBERTY.

Another reason Sotomayor could not support that hormonally-effed-up-thus-eligible claim is that it’s unethical to purposely introduce disease into a healthy child by injecting him with powerful harmful drugs, so such a study has never passed an Institutional Review Board which monitors safety and ethics of human studies.

A rule of science that Sotomayor seems ignorant of is that bold claims require equally bold evidence. It’s a pretty damn bold claim that a boy, inflicted with female hormones, “becomes” a girl, despite the myriad physical features unaffected by such an assault, including every XY cell in his body that have made him male since conception. And the fact that no humans have ever changed sex. So the evidence should be pretty damn strong that he’s a girl and and has no advantage. Yeah right. Nuthin. Sotomayor, a Supreme Court Justice, had and has NO ARGUMENT other than that the litigant says he is a special boy and has no advantage.

After pages of word salad, Sotomayor concluded with this:

The facts here illustrate the difference. B. P. J. was told that she cannot play on girls’ teams because she was identified as male at birth. If her sex identified at birth had been female, however, B. P. J. would have been allowed to play on girls’ teams.

Uhhmm, yes. Those are the facts. Sotomayor went on about facts, which was a dangerous new line of attack for her:

Because of the Court’s decision today, West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B. P. J. and others like her these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not.

Uhhmm. She did not show any evidence that either BPJ, Hecox, or “others like her” did not have advantage. See, saying something does not make it a fact. BPJ saying she did not have an advantage does not make it a fact.

Astounding but true, that’s her parting shot. That’s all she got. She didn’t talk about Lindsay Hecox at all because Hecox never jiggered with his hormones as a child, so is by Sotomayor’s assessment, just a male demanding to participate in women’s sports. She argued BPJ is a special boy/girl because he says so, and he should be in girls’ sports because he wants to be. Wow. Okay.

The non-biologist who could not say what a woman is, Justice Jackson, nonetheless waded in way over her head with this:

But there is reason to doubt the soundness of the concession that Title IX’s reference to “sex” means only sex assigned at birth.

She was stupid enough to bring up stereotypes and “transgender women” in the same sentence and then burped up as her parting shot this fantastic fabrication about Title IX:

Title IX makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose; it cares not just about sex assigned at birth but also about individuals’ ability to match (or not) their gender presentation to their gender identity. Because West Virginia’s law forces B. P. J. to live—in this case, to play—as a boy though she is a girl, it might well run afoul of Title IX properly construed.

That is an absolute lie. Title IX, “on the basis of sex” does not hint at gender, does not give a flying fuck about gender, is not tainted by gender. West Virginia law, and Title IX recognizes sex. Jackson presents zero evidence that Title IX “makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose,” and gallops straight from that idiotic statement to calling BPJ a girl. Because? Why? How? She beclowns herself and the vaunted position she holds.

There is simply no debate here. The evidence provided, all on one side, shows that boys are not girls, men are not women,but some boys want to participate in women’s sports and will be sad if they cannot. That’s all. It’s embarrassing that this case was entertained by the Supreme Court.