The Supreme Court’s trans sports cases are about erasure, not fairness

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

The Supreme Court's trans sports cases are about erasure, not fairness

https://www.advocate.com/opinion/supreme-court-transgender-sports-case 🔗

Henry Kurkowski (13 Jan 2026)

Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases about whether transgender students can be banned from school sports. On paper, the question is narrow: can states bar trans girls from girls' teams and still claim to comply with the Constitution and with Title IX?

In reality, the Court will be asked to decide something much larger. Are trans people, particularly trans women and girls, legitimate participants in public life, allowed to be seen as who they are in spaces that everyone else takes for granted, like school sports?

We got here through years of coordinated effort. Since 2020, more than two dozen states have passed laws excluding trans athletes from teams that match their gender. Many of those laws invite invasive "sex verification" procedures that put every girl under suspicion if her body does not fit rigid ideas of what a girl should look like. This is not a grassroots response to a flood of trans athletes. It is a top-down campaign that has now reached the highest court in the country.

What is unfolding now around trans sports bans is not a good-faith policy debate about fairness. It is a visibility war built on a dual strategy: erase trans lives from everyday spaces, and amplify the fight against them in the spotlight.

These laws erase trans representation from school sports, restrict access to bathrooms and locker rooms, eliminate discussion in classrooms, ban books, and reach into health care. When trans people are pushed out of these spaces, their presence becomes rarer and more precarious.

[Dances With Trees]

Dear Jessica,

I feel as though we've already been erased, banned and eliminated. And not merely informally, but by law. At least in my home state of Montana. Though voices like Zooey Zephyr's occasionally rise above the cacophony of hate. The most I hope for is rebirth and resurgence. I will settle for visibility since acceptance seems out of reach. I pray the Supreme Court rules in favor of the young woman from Virginia. But I have little faith it will.