Within weeks of SCOTUS's B.P.J. decision, Heritage called Title IX "feminist social engineering" and called for its overhaul. Reva Siegel and I revised our forthcoming piece in the Tx. L. Rev. to make sense of B.P.J. and what's going on: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... balkin.blogspot.com
Dismantling Equality Rights Through "Biological-Sex" Talk
<p><span>In rejecting the sex-discrimination claims of transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care in <i>United States v. Skrmetti</i> (2025) and transgende
papers.ssrn.com
![This case concerns an Executive Branch policy requiring
all new passports to display an individual’s biological sex at
birth. The United States District Court for the District of
Massachusetts preliminarily enjoined the Government
from enforcing the policy, and the First Circuit declined to
stay the injunction pending appeal. The Government then
filed this stay application. Applying our familiar stay fac-
tors at this preliminary stage, we grant the application.
Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends
equal protection principles than displaying their country of
birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to
a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential
treatment. And on this record, respondents have failed to
establish that the Government’s choice to display biological
sex “lack[s] any purpose other than a bare . . . desire to
harm a politically unpopular group.” Trump v. Hawaii, 585
U. S. 667, 705 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the
State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by de-
clining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress ex-
pressly required it to follow. See 22 U. S. C. §211a.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6h7b2i6ttw3l4t7pvbvxdith/bafkreiacrtgoecxjy5y7ojz7xzbun4c4nwutjcvqn4qb4p25ldpt6va5lu)
