In a masterful takedown of leftist gender ideology during U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments in the consolidated transgender sports cases Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., conservative Justice Samuel Alito left ACLU attorney Kathleen Hartnett scrambling for answers by pressing her on the basic definition of sex under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The exchange laid bare the absurdity of progressive attempts to erase biological reality in favor of subjective feelings, a move conservatives have long warned threatens women’s rights and fairness in athletics.The cases challenge common sense laws in Idaho and West Virginia that protect girls’ sports by requiring participation based on biological sex, not self-identified gender. These measures uphold Title IX’s original purpose: ensuring women aren’t sidelined by biological males.
Alito, ever the defender of constitutional clarity, confirmed the need for separate boys’ and girls’ teams, then zeroed in: “Is it not necessary for there to be—for equal protection purposes, if that is challenged under the equal protection clause—an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?”Hartnett, representing transgender plaintiff Lindsay Hecox, dodged and weaved like a true activist, refusing to dispute the statutes’ definitions but claiming they unfairly exclude “birth-sex males” without merit.
She babbled about not having a court-ready definition, focusing instead on a vague “subset” where exclusion “doesn’t make sense.” Alito wasn’t buying it, presenting a hypothetical: a student with male chromosomes, reproductive system, and no treatments who identifies as female and demands a spot on the girls’ team. Could a school bar them without “discriminating on the basis of sex”?The attorney floundered, affirming self-identity while pivoting to “sex-based biological advantages”. When Alito asked if this would trigger heightened scrutiny for “transgender status,” Hartnett suggested it should, exposing the left’s push to elevate gender feelings to protected class status, potentially overriding women’s hard-won protections.
Alito’s pointed follow-up—”How are courts supposed to determine whether there’s discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means?”—cut to the core, highlighting how radical ideologies undermine judicial logic and biological truth.