Honestly, God bless Helen Lewis. In a piece for the Atlantic praising the Supreme Court decision that trans athletes can be banned from women’s sports regardless of whether they have an athletic advantage or not, she gives voice to a view that needs to be addressed heads on: Despite the unprecedented right-wing lurch the Supreme Court has taken, overturning decades of precedent to politicize independent agencies, neuter the role of congress, and overturn laws passed to protect the rights of Black voters in former Confederate states, on trans issues they are very moderate and mainstream.
In Lewis’ view, which seems widely held among the punditocracy and laughable to everyone else the second Trump Administration, including the rulings of Trump’s handpicked judges, can be divided into two separate bins: In one bin there are attacks on science, grant funding, congressional oversight, the independence of congressionally created agencies, the abuse of prosecutorial discretion to prosecute political opponents, and the many ongoing corruption and bribery scandals, all of which constitute a grave threat to the health of our democracy and our future as a free people. In the other bin there’s everything to do with trans people, from US vs Skrmetti which banned medically approved treatments only for trans kids to the HHS’ review of the evidence on gender affirming care to the prosecution of WPATH and the ruling that trans girls can be excluded from girls sports even if they have no athletic advantage from puberty at all because the equal protection clause simply does not apply to them.
Simply put, however uncomfortable Lewis and her ilk may be with trans people, this is not a logical or reasonable way to look at the Administration or the high court. Kennedy’s HHS takes the exact same approach to gender medicine that it takes to vaccines: It selects the outcome it wants and creates a thin scientific justification after the fact. Likewise, the Supreme Court’s decision on gender-affirming care set a precedent that facts and medical evidence have no place in medical regulation, base prejudice and political expediency are the only rule the court respects.
In the recent case, on trans athletes, the stakes might seem lower. However, by ruling that trans people have no claim to equal protection under the law the court is eroding the rights of every single American. Equal protection exists to safeguard individuals from arbitrary and capricious laws based in prejudice and spite. That’s what bans on trans athletes are, particularly when they target a single child with no conceivable advantage because her puberty has been the same as other girls.
In her piece, Lewis makes much of the fact that most Americans agree that trans girls should be banned from playing sports with other girls. The principle of equal protection is that such sentiments shouldn’t allow the majority to trample the rights of a minority. That principle is what’s at stake, for everybody, not just for trans girls.
The US Supreme Court has made a number of extreme and troubling rulings in recent years. In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, Brett Kavanaugh gave ICE officers the right to racially profile people who speak Spanish or whose ethnicity appears Latin American, with no protections for US citizens caught in such raids. In Trump v. Slaughter (and in prior rulings) SCOTUS neutered congress’ ability to check a President who fails to faithfully execute the laws. enabled former Confederate states to disenfranchise voters based on race, and re-politicized agencies of the US government that have been nonpartisan since 1883. In Louisiana v. Callais Samuel Alito effectively overturned the Voting Rights Act of 1965, leaving it a law in name only and paving the way for a mass re-disenfranchisement of Black voters in former Confederate states.
The Trump Administration and the high court are not far right extremists taking a wrecking ball to our most dearly held principles, except on trans rights where they are modest, moderate, pragmatic thinkers balancing fairness with pragmatism and the best available science, neutrally applying US law. Instead, anti-trans pundits are liberals except in the case of the transgender community, where their intense discomfort with people who live differently turns them into carbon copies of the far right on this issue alone.
This dual vision is dangerous for trans people, but it’s also dangerous for the entire country. The rights of trans people have become a testing ground where some of the most extreme actions, such as the prosecution of WPATH by a politicized FTC, can be rolled out without risking a widespread outcry. When the outcry comes, it’s diluted by the fact that Lewis and her compatriots have defended the excesses of the Administration and the court when it comes to their culture war against trans rights.
The trans community didn’t ask to be a canary in the coalmine of American democracy, but it adds insult to injury when members the pundit class refuse to even glance over at the cage to observe us falling off our perch. Their rights are next, whether they see it or not.
