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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that transgender language is a “lie to the public” in a Tuesday opinion, concurring with a ruling that blocks athletes who were assigned to the male sex at birth from competing against biological women.
“Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic, see ante, at 10; it is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex,” Thomas wrote.
“To use language to obscure reality to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’— is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens ‘as equal[s],’” he continued.
The justice referenced the term “gender dysphoria” in his opinion.
It’s a clinical diagnosis for psychological distress caused by a the difference between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth.
Not all transgender or nonbinary people experience gender dysphoria; it only occurs when the incongruence leads to significant distress or impairment in daily life, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
Thomas said gender dysphoria “does not resemble the immutable characteristics on the basis of which our precedents have applied heightened scrutiny- race, sex, or national origin.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred and dissented in part from the majority ruling, arguing state laws that ban transgender girls from women’s sports discriminate on the basis of sex without enough justification and violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause.
Sotomayor writes that the ruling “inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions,” in her opinion.
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