People say, not referring to you here, but they don't want politicians and judges interfering, and here we are asking for politicians to interfere. What happens when you don't get the exact legislation you want? Or laws with gaping loopholes? Or laws that are toothless and easily ignored? What happens when the next batch of politicians roll the law back? Then what?
I just want to say that I am not against trans people from playing in sports, but I think the bar has to be really high and backed with scientific data that can be reproduced and checked. In other words, again I am doing nothing more than hypothesizing here but lets say that after batteries of tests it's found that M2F people who have had orchiectomies or SRS surgery after 2 years can compete in any womens sports activity. Again I say that this is something established after batteries of tests, then the bar should be just a little beyond that. I know that people on the other side of the equation, meaning transitioning right now, won't like it, but they won't be standing in the same shoes they are now in several years. I also feel sorry for the high school teens that won't be able to participate in sports but as I said before it's the price of a gender transition. There's no such thing as a consequence free gender transition.
You might want to read Joanna Harper's book "Sporting Gender" (it is on Amazon). It covers not only issues around transgender athletes, but also around intersex athletes. It gives a good introduction of most intersex conditions, covers the history of intersex athletes in women's sports, the history and shortcomings of sex testing that was performed at Olympics and covers the discussions and deliberations they had behind the 2015 IOC guidelines on transgender athletes and the Chand and Semenya cases in front of the international court of arbitration in sports (CAS). It is really worth reading if you are interested in the transgender sports aspect.
If you're against courts interfering then are you also saying that the 9th circuit court should punt on the Hecox v Little case currently in front of it?
When it comes to courts, I have ambivalent thoughts. On the one hand I truly appreciate the corrective nature of courts, who often try to correct legislation that is politically overly ambitious and/or not well thought out, overall judges seem to appreciate the complexities of the issues presented to them and their rulings are often much more nuanced than the original legislation which shows me that once you get to the bottom of an issue, things are not as easy as they look on the surface.
Where I do have an issue with politicians, and therefore by extension judges, getting involved is this: sport is never confined to the local level where an individual lawmaker operates, whether it is the state or county level. There are always state, regional, national and international competitions and any laws regulating sport will leave an unequal playing field by preventing folks who would be eligible to compete on a national level from getting there by starting locally. The reverse is also a concern, just imagine if a national championship is held in a region with anti-trans legislation in place. In this case a trans athlete from out of that jurisdiction cannot compete even though the national governing body considers them eligible. For this reason any rules regarding the participation of trans athletes should come from international governing bodies and the current IOC rules are a good start, since they will be adopted by the world governing bodies of all olympic sports and from there it will trickle down to the national level and so on.
Concerning that particular Idaho case, the court should throw out the legislation in question due to its discriminatory nature, not only towards trans women (the intent of the legislation), but also towards cis women (collateral damage I guess).
