Kate Redburn
@kredburn.bsky.social
Associate Prof. and Director, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, Columbia Law School.
Very thankful for this letter to Becky Pepper-Jackson (the 16 year-old trans girl SCOTUS ruled against yesterday) from James Dale, a gay man whose expulsion from the Boy Scouts was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2000.
To the Trans Girl Who Just Lost at the Supreme Court: So Did I 26 Years Ago
A letter to Becky Pepper Jackson about her trans sports case defeat at SCOTUS yesterday
medium.com
Many of the laws upheld today, like the one in Idaho, have specific provisions authorizing physical inspection. The original challenge included a cis plaintiff who feared intrusion based on her gender presentation.
Elizabeth Joh@elizabethjoh.bsky.social · last mo.Nightmare Fourth Amendment scenario just dropped
There's a lot to be angry about in BPJ, but one dimension of it is how Kavanaugh attacks the center of one of RBG's biggest cases. More on what I mean by that in @Slate.
Slate@slate.com · last mo.Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion for the court sets one of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s most famous opinions squarely in his crosshairs. slate.trib.al/qY9GsPA
The ban is heinous for what it does to transgender athletes. But if you think cisgender girls and young women won’t be caught up in the fallout, too, you are woefully ignorant
A minor chord in the athletics controversy is the sad idea that the point of youth sports is winning
Supreme Court on trans rights: heads I win, tails you lose.
Why is it bad to define sex in the Constitution? Because the government can't dictate what your personhood means. Legislation told women for centuries that their bodies make them naturally feminine, domestic, heterosexual, and reproductive.
Today the Court denied transgender women and girls constitutional equality. I predicted that the athlete cases could take this turn after last year's decision in Skrmetti: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u...
harvardlawreview.org
2/ But in B.P.J., the phrase "exceedingly persuasive" is absent from majority opinion, and as Sotomayor notes in dissent, the majority cites free speech int. scrutiny cases (and rational basis cases) in its application of equal protection intermediate scrutiny.
1/ One important doctrinal takeaway from B.P.J. decision is narrowing of gap b/n equal-protection intermediate scrutiny and free-speech int. scrutiny. Former had been viewed as rigorous (captured by "exceedingly persuasive" phrase), while latter long viewed (in Ct's words) as "relatively lenient."
Steven Mazie@stevenmazie.bsky.social · last mo.To be clear: the majority applied intermediate scrutiny, too, but found that the Idaho and West Virginia bans passed muster.
Part of her essential project to show that interpretation is inescapable - even for methods that claim otherwise: @fpeterson.bsky.social on the difference between law - the rules that 'actually constrain power - and text. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.....
The Limits of Text
Let’s say the “laws” are the rules that actually constrain power, organize government, and coerce people. That is, let’s define the law as the system of rules we
papers.ssrn.com
Sam Alito in Callais: the 14th/15th amendment only care about intentional discrimination! SCOTUS today: jk! not even that! (unless the “intentional” discrimination is attempting to comply with the voting rights act, in which case it’s unconstitutional intentional racial discrimination)
Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 3mo agoAs Sotomayor notes:
![Nothing in the District Court's Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court's opinion in Callais. Most obviously, Callais changed the legal standard for vote-dilu-tion claims under §2. See 608 U.S., at _ (slip op., at 19) ("[We must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands"). It said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional discrimination claims like the one that the District Court decided on remand in round two.
Callais also insisted that this Court's prior decision in Allen remains good law. See id., at _ (slip op., at 36) ("[W]e have not overruled Allen"). These cases are, of course, Al-len. So if Allen is good law anywhere, then it must be good law here. This Court's finding of racially discriminatory vote dilution is an inextricable, permanent feature of this case, and Alabama's willful decision to respond by entrenching rather than remedying that dilution is, as the District Court correctly recognized, evidence of discriminatory intent.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:36eqtmzysqf7wsslczw4uxcd/bafkreig356dn4ypbahujl3z6jswdp75xrrujbjdp2cu43lkwe4cavmxg2i)
Proud of my students for their research, which for the first time located the descendants of those enslaved by Columbia University's founders. www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/05...
Student researchers identify living descendant of person enslaved by Columbia founder
For the first time since the Columbia University and Slavery seminar began in 2014, students have identified a living descendant of someone enslaved by a Columbia affiliate.
columbiaspectator.com
Good news: two of these CIDs--against the Endocrine Society and against WPATH--have now been enjoined (h/t @kredburn.bsky.social), relying heavily on Media Matters's case as precedent. Q now is whether FTC will develop a theory of legal wrondoing or continue to vaguely say "deception" & harass
Luke Herrine@lookheron.bsky.social · 3mo agoI'll add that Media Matters's victory here has set a precedent that could be helpful to the professional organizations who support trans healthcare who are currently the subject of FTC CIDs. www.wired.com/story/the-fe...
Remind me what he was up to before politics?
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo agoObama: "What I'm more interested in for Democrats is, do you know how to just talk to regular people like we're not in a college seminar? Can you talk in plain English to folks? And not have a bunch of gobbledygook around it. Just talk like normal people talk. 'The rent is too high.'"
Download of the Week: “Historical Practice Theories” by Ahmed The Download of the Week is Historical Practice Theories by Ashraf Ahmed. Here is the abstract: Contemporary constitutional law and theory is preoccupied with the question of practice. Over the last decade, across a range of issues—from…
Download of the Week: “Historical Practice Theories” by Ahmed
The Download of the Week is Historical Practice Theories by Ashraf Ahmed. Here is the abstract: Contemporary constitutional law and theory is preoccupied with the question of practice. Over the last decade, across a range of issues—from gun rights to elections to school prayer to the structure of the administrative state—the Supreme Court has decided cases on the basis of past practice.
legaltheoryblog.com
The campus is the main battleground of America’s free-speech wars – so Lux is hitting the road for our first college campus tour. Read about it in @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Gender studies lives! The amazing @readlux.bsky.social is traveling the country to spread the word www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
This was the most interesting conversation I have had in a long time. Brilliant @azizaahmed.bsky.social talked to me about her new book & how feminists transformed the science of AIDS. lpeproject.org/blog/how-fem...
Bluesky
bazizaahmed.bsky.social
As the press makes sense of the arguments in the transgender athlete cases today, you're likely to see one exchange between Justice Gorsuch and Deputy SG Mooppan (like this one from NPR) www.npr.org/2026/01/13/n.... Why?
Supreme Court appears likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes
To date, 27 states have enacted laws barring transgender participation in sports.
npr.org
Notice that the US govt as amicus is now arguing that transgender people can't complain about being treated unequally as a despised politically powerless minority via a sex-based classification because they're too small a minority. That's . . . uhm . . . interesting?
I could really go for less of this Michael M hypothetical from Mooppan
As arguments begin in the transgender athletes cases, a few things to keep in mind:
I'll be live-skeeting the oral argument in the transgender athletes cases at the top of the next hour. (A "skeet" is the BlueSky equivalent of a tweet.) Expect snark and rage--unless I'm very pleasantly surprised. Meanwhile, here's the brief I signed as a lawyer and as an amicus.
supremecourt.gov
kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life
“Critics have likened Mr. Trump’s approach to extortion, while others agree it’s extortion but aren’t critics.”
Marty Lederman@martylederman.bsky.social · 8mo agoHow did the @nytimes.com editors let this sentence appear? "Critics have likened Mr. Trump’s approach to extortion, while others have chalked it up as a cost of doing business with this administration." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...
sometimes a beautiful book arrives at just the right time. cannot recommend @riislover667.bsky.social’s This Watery Place highly enough!
My moderating skills were a little rusty, but this event still turned out SO GREAT thanks to @sandynurse.bsky.social & @ngusdorf.bsky.social!! If you want to learn about how NYC government works (we get deep into the city budget) you absolutely can't miss this event!! youtu.be/kTZb8XlVJs0
Local Power
YouTube video by LPE Project
youtu.be
