Supreme Court hands down ruling on participation in youth athletics
UC Law professor speaks with Newsweek about the decision
Newsweek interviewed Ryan Thoreson, associate professor at the Donald P. Klekamp College of Law, about the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that permits bans on transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia.
The High Court found the state regulations do not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX. Newsweek reported that 27 states have laws limiting the participation of transgender athletes, according to the nonprofit Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks these laws nationwide.
Thoreson told Newsweek that whether or not the ruling has implications beyond sports depends on how courts interpret it.
“The court repeatedly points to specific concerns in the field of sports, but the court's willingness to treat restrictions based on biological sex as benign and ignore the serious harm they inflict on transgender people is a worrying sign for litigation around bathrooms, pronouns, driver's licenses, birth certificates, passports, the military ban, and many other laws and policies that are erasing recognition of transgender people's gender identity and undermining their rights,” Thoreson told Newsweek.
At UC Law, Thoreson’s scholarship examines the legal and social regulation of gender and sexuality and spans constitutional law, comparative and international law, and human rights law.
Read the Newsweek article online.
Learn more about UC’s Ryan Thoreson online.
Featured top image of U.S. Supreme Court building provided by iStock.
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