Argument of Girls Sports “Trans” Cases at SCOTUS was “Otherworldly”
“In this other world, we’re arguing basically about whether girls sports are for girls or are they also for boys who identify as girls…. And I say it’s otherworldly because this should be the easiest thing in the world. This should be, but it’s not.”
Oral argument took place on January 13, 2026, in two cases involving state law attempts to protect girls sports – in Idaho and West Virginia. Our Equal Protection Project submitted amicus briefs in support of the girls in both cases. Tim covered the oral argument earlier, but I got a chance to give my hot take with Jesse Kelly on his show.
My segment on the SCOTUS oral argument is below, the full segment in which we also discussed the national guard deployment and other issues is here.
The Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in two major culture war cases. @wajacobson breaks down those cases and lays out a timeline for when SCOTUS may decide.
Subscribe: https://t.co/ETWKyUC1Wu pic.twitter.com/pH0wLHegSu
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) January 14, 2026
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
I’ve added a couple of clips to the transcript.
Kelly (00:00):
What’s going on with these cases? Why are there two of them? What’s gonna be the, what might be the outcomes? Give it to us.
WAJ (00:07):
Well, it’s other worldly. As you indicated, this is involving two law … We’re in another world now, and I’m gonna try to put us into the real world.
In this other world, we’re arguing basically about whether girls sports are for girls or are they also for boys who identify as girls. And that’s really what it comes down to. So Idaho and West Virginia passed laws that in a nutshell said, we’re going to protect girls sports. And girls sports are only for biological girls. I don’t know if that’s the term they used, but that’s what they meant. So those laws were challenged and actually put on hold because there were two males, one in each state who identify as female who wanted to participate in female sports. And that’s why we’re in the Supreme Court.
And I say it’s otherworldly because this should be the easiest thing in the world. This should be, but it’s not.
I don’t know which way it’s going to go. We should come out of this oral argument thinking it’s nine to zero, but I think it’s going to be five to four. I just don’t know which direction. And they were taking this very seriously.
It was kind of humorous at one point. I mean, Alito, who’s tied with Thomas for the best Justice on the court asked a question, and we don’t have video, but you know he had an ear-to-ear grin. He asked the attorney for the girls to give him the definition of what it means to be a girl or a boy. And she said, well, we don’t have that definition, which harkened back to Katanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing, where she was asked, give me the definition of a woman. And she said, well, I can’t, ’cause I’m not a biologist.
‘I’m not a biologist’: Remember when Ketanji Brown Jackson couldn’t define what a woman is during her confirmation hearing? pic.twitter.com/YaTbkEfvOy
— Catch Up Bites (@catchupbites) October 22, 2025
Anyway, that’s where we are. Most of the argument today surrounded levels of review. A lot of words like heightened scrutiny and strict scrutiny. So a lot of it was kind of court sort of jargon as to what can we do to review this.
But when you get down to it, we are literally in the Supreme Court arguing whether a school district can protect girls’ sports or not.
Kelly (02:25):
Good freaking grief. Okay, Bill, you said, obviously, and in the world of reality, it’s a fairly simple case, but, but it gets a little bit more convoluted legally. I’m kind of putting words in your mouth, but that’s basically what I heard. What’s the legal argument here? Because for a normal person, this is obviously a no brainer thing. What’s the legal hiccups?
WAJ (02:49):
Most of the discussion today was whether these laws violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, whether by denying equal rights, they would say, to people they refer to as trans women or trans girls, whether that violates some protected right.
And one of the indications of where we are as a society is words like trans woman, trans girl, as opposed to male who identifies as a woman. was thrown around by just about everybody.
Today, in fact, Katanji Brown Jackson threw in the term cisgender. If any of your viewers don’t know what that is, that’s describing people who are what we used to call just normal people, a man who identifies as a man and a woman who identifies as a woman. But they’ve created a whole new term to make it sound like that’s weird and that’s strange. So that term was thrown around.
Listen to how ridiculous Ketanji Brown Jackson sounds when she tries to discuss what a woman is. She embarrasses herself in every oral argument. pic.twitter.com/2K0jmVHCBl
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 13, 2026
And so the legal claim is that transgender students are a protected class or an identifiable class, which is entitled to equal protection of the laws.
And it seems absurd on its face. It shouldn’t hold up because a lot of the dialogue today, a lot of the questions, particularly from the so-called conservative justices, were: are you telling me we can’t have separate boys and girls for sports? And, and no one’s really contending that. What they’re trying to do is say, you are being unfair. Here’s a child, a boy or a a girl, whoever it is, and you’re treating them unfairly. And so there was a very circular argument that yes, we can have girls sports, but you still have to treat these other people, you know, make an exception for them. And that’s what a lot of it was. And that seemed to get some sympathy from Gorsuch and other people.
How they’ll rule, I don’t know. But there were questions even from the so-called conservatives about aren’t we being unfair to this group of people?
During oral argument today, Justice Amy Coney Barrett repeatedly referred to boys who identify as girls as “trans girls.” She also used the term “cisgender,” which many of us find offensive. It’s concerning that she has adopted the ideology’s language. pic.twitter.com/547tXmSIuw
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) January 13, 2026
And unfortunately, unfairness is not the normal legal standard. You’ve got to find something more firm.
We submitted at the Equal Protection Project that I run, briefs in both cases, both of the cases. And our argument was, wait a second here. You cannot have a term in the law that is completely fluid for any given person. You could identify as a male today, a female tomorrow, the day after that a male again.
You can’t have a legal system where everything is fluid and subject to the subjective thoughts of a person. You need something objective. And the only objective definition of sex is biological. And that’s what we are arguing.
It didn’t really come up that fluidity notion in the argument today.
Hopefully the court will read our brief, but that’s why I’m saying we’re in the nether world where, where nothing is firm, nothing is real. It’s all what you feel and what you think and should have somebody have sympathy for you.
Well, what about, and this did come up a little bit, not a lot. What about sympathy for the girls who are in girls’ sports and don’t want to have to compete against males? What about the sympathy for them?
Riley Gaines is pissed off!
Great listen to this intelligent young lady!
👏👏👇 pic.twitter.com/tNpmQQ3yLP— 🇺🇸 MAGA/RICK🇺🇸 (@Rickbarmore) January 13, 2026
That wasn’t a hot topic today. It did come up.
But that’s what’s missing from this whole equation is you have girls getting injured, you have girls getting deprived of awards, you have girls getting deprived of college opportunities because they don’t win awards in their sports. That really didn’t come up a lot today, and that’s the saddest thing about it. Now, it might when they actually write the decisions, but that’s what the argument was today, is this unfair?
Kelly (06:32):
When do they actually write the decisions, Bill? This process seems to be so slow for those of us, those of us on the outside looking in. When do we get decisions on things like that?
WAJ (06:42):
This one will probably not be until June. I mean, we’re already in January and it was just argued June is the end of the term. Uh, and we’ve discussed what term means. It just means when they issue, hear their arguments and issue their decisions. And generally speaking, other than emergency matters, the term ends at the end of June. So I think this is one we’ll probably get in June. Uh, you know, there are other ones which might and will be fast tracked, but this one doesn’t seem to be on a fast track.
Five-Year-Old Brought In To Explain Difference Between Boys And Girls To Supreme Court https://t.co/FBBtE5lVm5 pic.twitter.com/8seIkmPftH
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 14, 2026
Or as was explained in simpler times:
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Comments
The women of the Supreme Court arguing that they don’t exist. Because the Party demands they deny what they know to be true. Big Brother rises.
It’s all so disgusting and I don’t believe we are discussing this in the Supreme Court.
I am a woman, I have a daughter who played D1 basketball
I have 2 granddaughters
Don’t get me started if the SC rules against girls…
Coward
Take heart; a majority of the nine will do the right thing. The three fates, Clotho (the Spinner, who spins the thread of life), Lachesis (the Allotter, who measures its length), and Atropos (the Inflexible, who cuts the thread at death) will all vote for lunacy.
When Cleese et alia did this it was intended as parody, not predictive,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZz0tL1nZWI
What’s amazing is that 3 of the 9 already knew how they would vote before they heard the arguments. When you go into court and you’re a justice on the court, you at least should appear to have an open mind. These three however, if they opened their minds, as Ross Perot once said, “There would be a giant sucking sound.”
Same comment as I left on the other post.
If they lose the hill where they get to decide what words mean exactly when they same them, they are out in the wilderness for decades.
They will not go quietly.
Actually, the word that dim-witted, moronic “DEI” hire, the Dhimmi-crat activist, “Justice” Jackson, referenced during oral argument, was “cis-ginger.” That’s how stupid this miserable twit is — she can’t even accurately invoke the Dhimmi-crats’ precious “trans” lexicon.
“Cis-ginger” is the new, must-have “secret seasoning” used in Asian dishes and stir-fires.
*stir-fries.*
It’s pronounced “stir-flies.”
I (from Taiwan) get teased all the time and I’m amused not angered.
Filed-lice is my favorite.
My granddaughter, 5, was exposed to a young g boy, with her friends , who decided to show them his Crown Jewels… he was 4
“Want to see my nuts”
She told us , “you know, boys have the nuts and that pointy thing”
She has more common sense then all the democrats and females on the SC
Looking at you Amy , you Karen idiot
Cis ginger
A strait person with red hair?
It could be a person with straight red hair; a trans ginger would be someone with straight red hair who insists they have naturally curly hair.
Or ‘cis ginger’ = natural hair color while
‘Trans ginger’ = hair dye?
Is your sis ginger? Amazing! My sis is ginger also.
My best friend’s sis is named “Ginger”, but her sis has black her. So her sis is not ginger.
I know what someone is going to say, “What gender is your sis?”
She’s my “sis”, duh!
If SCOTUS can’t make the easy decision to keep loony Cray Cray people who believe they can assert they are a different sex and then try to force the rest of us participate in their delusional cosplay away from the rest of society, then they should at minimum make the even easier decision to restrict this crap to exclusively adult settings/venues where no minor children are impacted.
If the Judiciary refuses to protect minor children out some misguided, Ned Flanders ish, fear of being called names by leftist wokiestas then we are over precipice and on a rapid descent into anarchy. There’s not a lot of options past this to off ramp from growing distrust/disrespect of our institutions by ordinary Citizens and once the leadership class, including and especially the Judiciary, has lost the willingness of ordinary Citizens to pay heed to its dictates there’s a shot hop from ignoring to actively opposing. When that Rubicon is crossed being called names by wokiestas will seem tame.
There is no such thing as “cisgender” or “transgender” for the simple reason that people don’t HAVE “genders”.
“Gender” is not a synonym for “sex”. It refers to the artificial or stereotypical categorization of certain words, ideas, abilities, and other things as having traits like or being associated with a “sex” — “feminine” (associated with the female sex), “masculine” (associated with the male sex), or “neuter” (neutral, associated with neither sex).’
“Sex” refers to the biological role that the individual plays in reproduction. There are only two of these roles.
Lawyers and judges must stop using meaningless words.
Didn’t you read ‘1984’? It’s called Newspeak. Change the language and control the minds. So they are NOT meaningless, far from it.
And that, boys and girls, is why it worries me when Barrett–who is very deliberate in the way she uses words–chooses to adopt the neo-Marxist dialectical dictionary and talk about “trans girls” and “cisgender.”
thats how lefty wins
its absurd to even think this could be a problem
on a tangent
the canadian socialist gov healthuncare has it figured out
just deny the surgery and let the patient suffer and opt for suicide…aka assisted euthanasia :
Jared Clarke, the Shadow Minister for Rural and Remote Health in Saskatchewan, has attempted to persuade Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill to help Van Alstine “get her the surgery she needs”, saying that Van Alstine is “at a breaking point” and her “suffering has become unbearable”.
https://nrlc.org/nrlnewstoday/2025/12/canadian-woman-getting-assisted-death-because-she-cant-get-surgery/
this is how lefty does it
the most insane open and shut things they challenge and the courts go along with them
they have the money from the good people to further humiliate and destroy civility
kentaji will be the chief justice
you can be whatever you want
on your own time and dime
Good jurists who once knew germane words
Now use only new insane words
Didn’t even read the article but boy, am I steamed. She has no business being on the highest court of our Great Country. Joe Biden was not legitimately elected, the election was stolen, all his appointments are null and void. This blithering baboon’s blatherings are a stain on history and it should be buried in disgrace. May God have mercy on us all.
I recall that Justice Thomas, after the whole manufactured Anita Hill debacle, was generally quiet and introspective, which the left jumped on as “unqualified.” Now he makes rationally considered decisions that are legal gold.
Brown is the poster child for everything that is wrong with a DEI hire, and we know she is one because Biden clearly stated that his first priority was “a black woman.”
Vegetables pick other vegetables, apparently.
Sorry, for all the shenanigans that definitely happened in 2020 (in addition to all the wild allegations that didn’t happen, and that served to discredit the ones that did), the fact remains that the electors chosen by the states voted on Dec=17-2020, and their votes were duly counted on Jan-6-2020 (and no, Pence did not have the constitutional authority to stop it), and Joe Biden was duly elected. There will forever be an asterisk on his presidency, but he was legally the president, and those actions that he himself consciously took or authorized are valid.
Obviously any actions he didn’t take or authorize, but were unlawfully done in his name, are invalid; but so far we have no proof which ones those were. That’s the problem with the autopen. Not that it’s illegitimate, but that it was sometimes used without his authority.
What business have you got, ruling on an issue of boys and girls, when you can’t agree on a discussion of what a boy or a girl is? Science, as in Biology? The Party of Science Has Spoken (and Proven itself incapable of an opinion here)
I get the feeling that the Supreme Court will overturn the West Virginia and Idaho laws on very narrow technical grounds. This is to avoid setting a precedent so Roberts can claim the Court is trying to not interject itself in the political debate or make law. All adults know that is a lie, but the media will dutifully cover it up.
Roberts took a well-deserved beating for his insane Obamacare ruling. So now he seeks to shred the Constitution as quietly as possible one decision at a time instead of noisily nuking it like he did with Obamacare. But he is still a Commie thug and always will be.
Culture Marxism has arrived at the Supreme Court, just think 1 more Culture Marxist on the Court could make this country living under lies.
The battle is over whether ordinary conversation implies that transwoman is a possibility under women, or not. Almost everybody thinks not.
If the court overturns the two State laws it’s the end of girls sports. Parents will not permit their girls to compete against boys. This isn’t T-Ball we are talking about. It’s high school and college level sports. You can’t hate the left and “Karen’s” enough. It is they who have brought us to this point. It is they who have given us a complete moron as a Supreme Court Justice.
“And unfortunately, unfairness is not the normal legal standard. You’ve got to find something more firm.”
Then, pray tell, what is the basis for “equality?”
To the main point: biology trumps psychology (pun intended). Enabling gender dysphoria destroys both language and culture. You should see what a gender minefield high schools are today. It gives ultimate power to the students over the teachers.
Maybe we should just remove all barriers to “equality,” e.g. drop weight and skill classes in boxing and martial arts, demand female representation in all professional sports, remove all “historically black and women’s universities, make all physical tests for soldiers, LEOs etc., one high effective standard, no “female” special rules, and certainly remove all racial classifications, as they denigrate some races (whites) over others, and it is fluid, depending on what votes the Demsocialists need in a given election.
Who needs circuses anymore?
I mean, Alito, who’s tied with Thomas for the best Justice on the court asked a question, and we don’t have video, but you know he had an ear-to-ear grin. He asked the attorney for the girls to give him the definition of what it means to be a girl or a boy. And she said, well, we don’t have that definition
He asked the attorney for the boys.. Kathleen R. Hartnett. This is an automated transcript of a discussion.. I get it.. but that is really confusing.
That video is included in this article.. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/alito-presses-trans-female-athletes-lawyer-definition-woman-during-scotus-hearing
This isn’t stupid, it’s malicious.
Sports are unfair in its nature.
Somebody wins, somebody loses.
As far as I can see those who wrote the 14th amendment weren’t talking about little boys dressing up as girls and running a 100 yard dash.
I hate this new world we’re forced to live in.
I absolutely loathe it.
Good morning my dearest Professor Jacobson,
As usual my best wishes for your health and safety.
I try not to look at the world after about noon. I have few brain cells and they need a good nights rest. I see some of my favorites are also here this morning, Hi CommoChief.
The brain cell I have allotted to the sex issue agrees with the 5y-old, there is XX and XY. Everything else is in the mind. It can be assigned to mental illness, maliciousness (hat tip patchman2076) or perhaps a desperate cry for special olympics.
Or…. my favorite, declared unconventional warfare. Hi Milhouse… can we figure out how to get out of “law enforcement” and acknowledge and declare warfare? Are there enough scraps of “law” to doff the red coat with the lovely white X target yet?
I think I need to rest my brain cells also.
Unfortunately they pull me back in.
If the Supreme Court rules that we have to allow cosplay in schools because the kids say so, where will it ever stop? I can just see it now: “This child identifies as a cat. You have to allow her to wear her furry cat suit as is appropriate to her identity. You have to provide her with a litter box in all school bathrooms, and since cats are obligate carnivors, you have to provide her with an appropriate school lunch.”
Can I identify as a billionaire?
Where’s my money?
Yes, you can. But if men can’t get pregnant, you can’t spend your funny money.
Phony Baloney is still phony baloney.
Using the enemy’s terminology (yes, the enemy’s) makes any intelligent discussion impossible. There is no such thing as “trans” because nothing transitions—no matter how many drugs and hormones are pumped into the person, no matter how much plastic surgery is performed, all you wind up with is a medically mutilated male or female (depending on the person’s birth sex). No normal person should be forced, under color of law, to sacrifice his or her rights (e.g., the left’s vaunted right to privacy) to accommodate a mentally disturbed person. If we go down that road what’s next? Ordering a woman to marry the psycho who insists she loves him?
Cases at SCOTUS are otherworldly?
Another way of saying “Disconnected from reality.”
We’re in La La Land now.
Two things. How do you adjuticate an issue if you can’t identify what it is. Two, what’s to prevent any man/boy from just saying, “I’m a woman/girl” and taking part in that particular event and then becoming a man/boy the next day? Since there is now no way legally to determine which is which does that mean that we are all the same? If this subject was a novel it would be listed under comedy!
The crux of the pro trans argument is that definitions must be avoided else you have clear discrimination against women. This was highlighted in the Alito questioning of Harnett; he finally pinned her down and she agreed that without a definition, one couldn’t demonstrate discrimination against any group so she accepted the state’s definition and thus made their argument for them.
Harnett was “aided” in a separate line of questioning by Brown who argued that the individual should decide if their sex provides them a competitive advantage and if so, bow out; Browns reduction ad absurdum argument – if she were capable of applying it in general – undermines the rule of law as each individual can decide what laws do and do not apply to them.
From what I saw, the unworldliness of the session captures the real world woke arguments quite well and lays bare their logical fallacies. I’m interested in seeing the ruling and its unavoidable dissent as both should be very entertaining but for different reasons.
KBJ is an embarrassment to the Justices and lawyers in general as well as an embarrassment to Blacks. She clearly doesn’t have the intellect to be a SC justice and was an affirmative-action selection. There have to be 1000s of black women attorneys and 100s of justices who would be superior to her logic and intellect and could certainly identify and describe a woman.
It’s fairly obvious she doesn’t do her homework and just wings it in oral arguments. And she talks and talks…it embarrassing to watch. I personally know a dozen attorneys that would be better.
Heck, I don’t agree with Kagan, but at least I can follow her legal argument. Sotomayor at least seems to have some passing knowledge of the law. Kentanji-Brown sounds like someone who got a B- in High School civics elevated to the Supreme court. She’s not even smart enough to know when to shut up.
Where are all the lawsuits from girls pretending to be boys to play on all boys teams . . . .
Exactly. because there is zero advantage to biological females competing against males. Nobody cares.
What is otherworldly is how easy this is to sort out. In sports we have all sorts of categories and exceptions. Different weight classes in wrestling and boxing and weightlifting. Competitions for different levels of ability (we don’t let the black belts beat up on the green belts). Nobody runs around like a lunatic insisting a 250-pound man must compete in the 150-pound weight class.
Biologic men have inherent genetic advantages, much like a 7-foot-tall guy has advantages in basketball over someone that is 5 2. Simple. Trans female athletes compete against the boys. Note how NOBODY is arguing the opposite, that trans male athletes can’t compete against the boys. Because there is no inherent advantage in that scenario.
And that’s it. Simple. The alternative is to say we have no biologically based categories at all in sports.