The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Punts on Key Case
Remember that “strong conservative Supreme Court majority” people have been crowing about (or lamenting) ever since justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were seated? Well, never mind.
As CNBC triumphantly reports, “The Supreme Court on Monday handed the LGBT rights movement another victory, declining to hear an appeal that challenged the rights of transgender students to use the bathroom of their choosing.”
In a textbook case of media framing, CNBC’s Dan Mangan wrote, “The use of bathrooms by transgender students and the acceptance of such students on school athletic teams has become a flashpoint for conservatives in recent years.”
A flashpoint for conservatives? The issue was never a flashpoint when it didn’t exist. And it didn’t exist until “progressives” and their Rainbow Mafia brethren made clear that there are simply no rights upon which they won’t attempt to trample by way of The Tyranny of the One.
At issue in this case, Gloucester County School Board v. Grimm, was whether the Equal Protection and Title IX rights of a female who “identified” as male were violated when the school assigned its boys to “boys” bathrooms, its girls to “girls” bathrooms, and its lone gender-dysphoric student to use a separate single-person bathroom.
Lower courts had ruled that the student in question had a right to use the boys’ bathroom, and SCOTUS, which refused to hear an appeal of these lower-court rulings, obviously agreed — including all three of the above-mentioned Trump-appointed justices. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were willing to hear the case.
Here, Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff makes a great point: “[Donald] Trump strongly [and, as it turns out, rightly] criticized George W. Bush for appointing [let’s just come out and say it: left-leaning Chief Justice] John Roberts to the Court. But Bush, in two tries,” says Mirengoff, “succeeded in nominating one very strong and reliable conservative Justice — Samuel Alito. It’s far from clear that Trump was able to do so in three tries.”
Time will tell. And time is on the side of Trump’s three justices — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett — who are a relatively youthful 53, 56, and 49 respectively.
As for this case, National Review’s Ed Whelan lays out an if-then scenario by which it may yet be taken up by the High Court, but it’s weak solace to those who’ve watched Chief Justice Roberts, for example, actively rewrite ObamaCare in order to save it.
This case, though, and “transgender” “rights” more broadly, pose a nightmare scenario for anyone with a daughter. Suppose a “transgender” man, having been permitted to enter the women’s locker room, exposes himself in front of your girl — or worse. What do you do? What recourse to you have? Shouldn’t the laws of a civilized society protect against this?
It happened recently at a spa in Los Angeles, and one patron had the guts to speak up about it:
A man flashed his penis in front of little girls at a spa and was allowed to do it because he claimed to be a woman. If you watch this video and find yourself siding with the man, please realize that you are not only insane but evil.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 27, 2021
pic.twitter.com/xB0jIq5rAf
“A man flashed his penis in front of little girls at a spa and was allowed to do it because he claimed to be a woman,” tweeted conservative commentator Matt Walsh. “If you watch this video and find yourself siding with the man, please realize that you are not only insane but evil.”
We side with Walsh, and we bring this up because there’s something fundamentally obscene, unnerving, and infuriating about such behavior — and civilizational decency calls on us to protect our girls from it.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to do that. And in doing so, it failed us.