Jay Willis at Balls and Strikes, regarding the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 ruling that allows states to exclude transgender athletes from women’s sports:

Generally speaking, when the fifth paragraph of a Supreme Court opinion contains the phrase “biological males who identify as females,” it is safe to assume that the author is not working toward a ruling that respects the dignity or existence of trans people.

The Brett Kavanaugh-penned majority opinion is riddled with “anti-trans rhetoric,” plus, from Clarence Thomas, “an opportunity to be cruel to trans people in public”:

Perhaps the most revealing opinion in B.P.J. comes from Justice Clarence Thomas, whose concurrence includes what are (at least for now) the most gleefully transphobic lines committed to the pages of the United States Reports. “A man does not have a legal right to compete against women just because he believes that he is a woman,” Thomas wrote. “Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are.” He closed with language that tracks the vile transphobic talking point that transgender people do not exist: To use language that obscures the “reality” of “biological” sex, Thomas wrote, “is to lie to the public.”

Hila Keren, also at Balls and Strikes, on the stunning “stereotype-laden” opinion that’s “laced with condescension for women athletes”:

The Court’s opinion does not just convey the conservatives’ disrespect for trans athletes, though. At times, its portrayals of cis girls in sports almost read as a younger version of the tradwives idealized by the religious right. Kavanaugh’s opinion amplified not only girls’ “inherent” physical inferiority in terms of “height, weight, strength, speed, endurance, and jumping ability,” but also their supposed inability to handle fairness, safety, and competitive issues, and a general struggle to cope with “debilitating disadvantage.”

The ruling itself is awful, and the language used to justify it is especially appalling.