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Wednesday, August 12, 2026

In West Virginia v B.P.J.,The U.S. Supreme Court Ruled on Transgender Rights as Sex Discrimination, Not as Gender Identity Discrimination


Weakening the protection against sex discrimination?

By Erwin Chemerinsky, Scotusblog, August 11, 2026 

Few were surprised by the court’s ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. upholding a West Virginia law prohibiting transgender girls and women from participating in sports corresponding to their gender identity. How the court justified its ruling, however, has troubling implications. The court analyzed the West Virginia law under equal protection as sex discrimination, not as gender identity discrimination. But the court departed from traditional principles that it had previously articulated for how such claims are to be analyzed. In this way, there should be great concern that the court has weakened the Constitution’s protection against sex discrimination.

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West Virginia v. B.P.J. involved a transgender teenager who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria at age nine and began taking puberty-blocking hormones at age 10, so she never reached male puberty. She is now receiving female hormones. B.P.J. was barred from participating in sports because of the West Virginia law and sued. She prevailed in the lower courts, which ruled in her favor, concluding that the West Virginia law violated both the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits sex discrimination by educational institutions receiving federal funds.

The court unanimously rejected her Title IX claim, stressing that the statute expressly allows for sex segregated sports teams. But the court split 6-3 as to whether the West Virginia law violated equal protection. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court and said that the case was about sex discrimination: B.P.J. was kept from playing on the girls’ team because of her biological sex.

It is well established that sex discrimination by the government must meet intermediate scrutiny under equal protection; that is, for the government action to be constitutional it must be substantially related to an important government purpose. The court said that the state had an important interest in barring transgender girls and women from participating in sports corresponding to their gender identity because they would have a competitive advantage and because they would create a safety issue for other players. The court also said that transgender girls would take spaces on girls’ teams that otherwise would go to cisgender girls. Kavanaugh wrote:

Based on all of the above, the States argue—and we agree—that the interests in safety and competitive fairness are important for purposes of equal protection analysis. And the States’ sex-based classification—limiting women’s and girls’ sports to biological females—is substantially related to those interests. Therefore, schools may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. In other words, schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex.

Although the majority did not say so, it actually departed from the ways in which it has provided protection against sex discrimination under equal protection. First, the court did not mention the prior decisions which said that sex discrimination is allowed only if there is an “exceedingly persuasive justification.” In the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the exclusion of women by the Virginia Military Institute. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg applied intermediate scrutiny and said that “[p]arties who seek to defend sex-based government action must demonstrate an ‘exceedingly persuasive justification’ for that action. . . . The burden of justification is demanding and it rests entirely on the State.” Ginsburg said that the justification “must not rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.”

Thus, the court was requiring more than traditional intermediate scrutiny – what some have labeled “intermediate scrutiny plus.” But in B.P.J.,by omitting the language requiring an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for sex discrimination, it would appear the court was implicitly changing the law and lessening the constitutional protection against such discrimination.

Additionally, Kavanaugh’s majority opinion said that it was sufficient to look at the overall justification for the law, and, given this, there did not need to be a focus on whether B.P.J. was unjustifiably discriminated against on account of her sex. But in many other cases the Supreme Court has rejected generalizations as a basis for sex discrimination and required individualized assessments. For example, in 1979’s Orr v. Orr, the court invalidated an Alabama law that allowed women, but not men, to receive alimony in case of divorce. The court explained that “[u]nder the statute, individualized hearings at which the parties’ relative financial circumstances are considered already occur. . . . Needy males could be helped along with needy females with little if any additional burden on the State.” But in B.P.J. the court rejected the need for an individualized analysis as to whether B.P.J. would have a competitive advantage or pose a safety risk to other players by virtue of being transgender.

This was a key point made by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor said that the question in this case was whether discriminating against B.P.J. was justified. She explained that the issue is not whether excluding transgender girls and women generally is permissible, but whether it was shown that barring B.P.J. – a teenager who began puberty-blocking hormones at age 10 – was needed to preserve competitive balance in sports or to prevent injuries. She said that this is a factual question and that the court should have sent the case back to the lower courts to determine this. She wrote:

the majority concludes that B. P. J.’s claim fails regardless of the unresolved factual dispute over whether transgender girls are similarly situated to cisgender girls for the reasons B. P. J. gives. That is wrong. As the Court's precedents recognize, factual disputes like this one relate to the fit of the classification and whether it survives heightened scrutiny.

Third, the court expressed the need for deference to the West Virginia legislature as to whether the bar on transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports was justified. The court said that the government did not need to prove that B.P.J., or those in her situation, would pose a safety risk or have a competitive advantage. The government could make an overall judgment. And the court said that even if such proof was required, there is sufficient medical uncertainty that there should be deference to the West Virginia legislature.

The court stated: “In any event, the plaintiffs’ premise is the subject of ongoing medical and scientific debate and is not settled in their direction at this time. States and leading athletic organizations disagree with the plaintiffs and have concluded that biological males still retain a physical advantage after taking puberty blockers and hormones.” The court recognized that “[t]he plaintiffs counter with arguments and studies of their own. But in assessing state and federal laws passed under circumstances of ‘medical and scientific uncertainty,’ this Court has often said that the Judiciary must be cautious about swooping in and invalidating laws. The legislatures, we have emphasized, maintain ‘wide discretion to pass legislation’ in those circumstances.”

Yet such deference to the legislature is characteristic of rational basis review (in which a law will be upheld if it is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose), not intermediate scrutiny. Sotomayor explained this well:

[T]he majority suggests that, even if relevant, the factual dispute implicates scientific uncertainty and that West Virginia's decision is thus entitled to conclusive deference. Here, too, the majority missteps, invoking cases applying rational-basis review, citing extra-record evidence, and ignoring critical context merely because it is inconvenient.

Perhaps West Virginia v. B.P.J. will be regarded as a case about applying sex discrimination principles to discrimination based on gender identity and not carry over to sex discrimination more generally. But the court could have decided this as a case about gender identity discrimination. It chose not to do so and instead to analyze the West Virginia law as sex discrimination under intermediate scrutiny. By doing so, the court raises real concern that it has watered down intermediate scrutiny and lessened the protections against sex discrimination. In that, the case may take on even greater significance than its critics have recognized.



Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He is the author of 20 books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction, and over 200 law review articles. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.

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Monday, July 27, 2026

Wall Street Journal Opinion: When Democratic Socialists Take Over

 

Democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during a campaign rally for Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is running for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat, in Minneapolis last week. Tim Evans/Reuters

When Democratic Socialists Take Over

Their purpose in trashing institutions isn’t to enhance democracy.


James Freeman

By 

James Freeman

 



Some may be tempted to look at the revolutionary designs of democratic socialists and give them credit for being honest about their plans. But we shouldn’t believe them.

Their basic argument is that they need to burn down American traditions like an independent judiciary, the separation of powers and free enterprise to achieve a more pure democracy. But after tearing down the institutions that protect unpopular minorities, safeguard individual liberty and diffuse political and economic power, history says they’ll destroy political freedom, too.

As for specific items in the current agenda for the U.S., a Journal editorial notes:

The Democratic Socialists of America are gaining strength in the Democratic Party, so it behooves voters to know what they’d do with political power. We know they want a “future without capitalism,” as their latest policy document avers. But most Americans may not know they also want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.

The left has long targeted the Electoral College because it thwarts the ability of the most populous states to dominate presidential elections. But in its latest manifesto, “Workers Deserve More,” the DSA says it wants to “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” It also wants to “abolish the Senate.”

One is led to believe that there will be a great democratic renaissance as the people rule directly through the House, but a recent experiment in democratic socialism suggests the results would be entirely undemocratic. In the summer of 2024 even our friends at Harvard and the New York Times had to acknowledge that things had not worked out as one might have hoped. Julie Turkewitz reported for the Times:

A generation ago, a charismatic former military officer swept into the highest office in Venezuela on a promise to deliver a more inclusive democracy, a system for the common man that would transfer the levers of power from the political elite to the people.
That man was Hugo Chávez, who in a democratic vote rode a wave of discontent into the presidential palace in 1999, eventually founding what he called the country’s socialist revolution.
But 25 years later, Mr. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, oversees an authoritarian regime that jails dissidents, tortures enemies, censors the media — and has just claimed victory in an election that opponents say was blatantly manipulated, contrary to the will of the people…
Venezuela is now internationally isolated, reeling from a decade-long economic crisis and suffering from a gaping emotional wound: the loss of millions of citizens who have fled abroad.
Steve Levitsky, an expert on democracy at Harvard University, called Sunday’s vote “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”

But the socialists promised they were going to be democratic! They also promised attacks on business owners and that there would be government-run grocery markets. These promises were kept. Twenty years after the Democratic socialists took power, CBS News reported in 2019:

Citizens picking food out of discarded garbage bags. A mother mourning the death of her infant, lost to malnutrition and malaria. A young boy uses paper currency to weave a makeshift purse, simply because inflation has rendered cash practically worthless.
These are some of the scenes witnessed by CBS News’ Adriana Diaz and her team as they walked through the streets of Caracas, Venezuela…
Perhaps most affecting are the scenes of families wracked by poverty and death. The child mortality rate in Venezuela has increased 140 percent, compared to 2008 levels. Diaz spoke with Nairobi Sortaga, whose infant son died in February from malnutrition and meningitis, weighing only 13 pounds at 1-year-old. Inside her impoverished home, an empty cupboard contained a small bag of lentils to feed Sortaga and her two daughters.
“It’s not my fault,” she said, wiping away tears.

No, it was not. But it’s important to blame the American leftists who somehow found nice things to say about the regime. A number of them advised Bernie Sanders the last time he ran for president.

Of course Mr. Sanders deserves as much blame as any American for the disgraceful support he offered to Democratic socialism’s chief thug. In January 2003, as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was cracking down on regime opponents, he was thrilled to receive support from a few extremists in the U.S. Congress. Pascal Fletcher reported for Reuters:

Chavez on Sunday read out a Jan 9 letter of support sent by 19 U.S. Congress members recognizing him as the legitimately elected president of Venezuela.
“If Abraham Lincoln or George Washington were alive and here today, they would be on our side,” he said.
In their letter, the 19 members of the U.S. House of Representatives – 18 Democrats and one independent – told Chavez they strongly opposed attempts to remove him from office and condemned Bush administration officials who appeared to support the short-lived coup against him in April.
The authors of the letter included Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and independent Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

In 2006, Mr. Sanders engineered another public-relations coup for Venezuela’s government by arranging a deal with regime-owned Citgo to provide subsidized heating oil in Vermont. Whatever it cost the Venezuelan government was surely worth the propaganda value. Mr. Sanders helped the regime embarrass the U.S. government, which had been trying to alert the world to the rising authoritarianism and economic destruction occurring in Caracas.

Don’t ever let Bernie Sanders and his acolytes pretend that Chávez was not their kind of Democratic socialist.

*****************

In a Related Story

Mamdani vs. American Justice

Marxists have always loved a good show trial, and New York City’s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is no exception. The mayor’s appeal to the non-authority of the International Criminal Court, which holds no jurisdiction over the U.S., is not a plea for justice. It’s an expression of confidence that his preferred venue will render the opposite.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal,” says Mr. Mamdani about the Israeli prime minister in a recent video. The mayor then harangues his way through a long list of claims, but doesn’t label a single one of them as an allegation.

The mayor continues his screed: “Anyone with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law. As I’ve said I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC.” Again, no use of the word alleged, which makes one wonder why the mayor thinks there’s any need for a trial. He’s obviously already made up his mind.

The ideologue who now governs New York City has already pronounced guilt, but like so many Marxists before him he wants the formality of a judicial process to clothe his targeting of the accused in something that looks like legitimacy, but is not.

The recent track record shows why the mayor can be confident that the ICC process will not be legitimate. A Journal editorial recently noted:

After months of burying the accusations, and more than two years of dithering, the International Criminal Court at last fired its prosecutor, Karim Khan. The court’s governing body found Friday that he had committed “serious misconduct and serious breach of duty” relating to sexual-assault allegations, which Mr. Khan denies…
After learning of the allegations against him, Mr. Khan cut short his Gaza investigation, stunning his own ICC staff—as well as many foreign leaders to whom he had given assurances—by denying Israel due process.
Instead of meeting with the Israelis and reviewing their evidence, or completing a full investigation, Mr. Khan rushed to CNN to announce his pursuit of arrest warrants. All of this departed from established procedure, but it got Mr. Khan ahead of the allegations.
The gambit held until these columns and a few others broke news of the allegations and whistleblower report. Mr. Khan then suggested it was all a foreign (read: Israeli) plot to intimidate him, never mind that the alleged victim, Sarah Hishan, is a Malaysian Muslim ICC lawyer who supports the anti-Israel prosecution… the ICC case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been marred beyond saving. Any U.S. court would have tossed it for prosecutorial misconduct.
But not the ICC.

Mayor Mamdani’s resistance to U.S. law is not because he doesn’t trust the American justice system. It’s because he does. What use to the advancement of his political agenda is a court system that provides justice?

***

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”




































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Friday, February 27, 2026

Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield Wants mRNA COVID Vaccines Removed From the Market

 Dr. Robert Redfield wants mRNA COVID vaccines removed from the market due to "too many unknowns".

This is, and has been, the problem. The US Department of Health should withdraw the vaccine nationwide,  seek more data on the side effects and overall effectiveness of this vaccine, and then recommend its use, if found to be beneficial to the American people.

Keep politics out of the medicine-health-industrial-complex.

Betsy Combier

betsy@advocatz.com


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Commissioner Robert Redfield speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Nov. 19, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
From the Epoch Times

Former CDC Director Calls for Removal of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines



Zachary Stieber
Senior Reporter
&

Jan Jekielek
Senior Editor
|Updated: 
‘There’s too many unknowns,’ Dr. Robert Redfield said.

COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna should be pulled from circulation, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said in a new interview.

“I really would like to see the mRNA vaccine use curtailed, and personally, I'd like to see it eliminated, because I think there’s too many unknowns,” Dr. Robert Redfield told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in an interview released on Dec. 9.
Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against COVID-19 utilize messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology. They were the first mRNA vaccines to receive clearance when regulators authorized them in late 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Redfield, 74, was the director of the CDC from March 2018 through Jan. 20, 2021, the end of President Donald Trump’s first term.

Redfield said he’s been treating patients who have so-called long COVID, as well as people suffering from vaccine injuries. He said he still favors a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax but no longer advises receiving the mRNA shots even though he thinks they prevented deaths among seniors early in the pandemic.

“I don’t advocate the mRNA vaccines anymore, because as you get to the idea of vaccine injury, when I give you an mRNA vaccine, what I do is I turn your body into a spike protein production factory,” Redfield told The Epoch Times. “And spike protein is a very immunotoxic protein.”

ased on the current data, it is unclear how much spike protein one produces following vaccination and how long it is produced, Redfield said.

“My long COVID patients seem to get better quicker than my vaccine injury patients,” he said. “And some of us wonder whether or not that mRNA that has caused that injury ... is still not transcriptionally active in producing new mRNA, in other words, with new spike protein.”

Patients with vaccine injuries have slowly been improving, and it’s important for people to realize they can ultimately recover from the injuries, Redfield said.

Spike protein generation and persistence has drawn attention from a number of experts, both inside and outside the government.

Dr. Vinay Prasad, a top Food and Drug Administration official, in the fall withdrew emergency authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines. In one of the documents outlining narrower, updated approvals for the vaccines, Prasad wrote that “there is growing clinical evidence that spike protein which is generated as a result of or in the course of vaccination may persist for some time in a subset of individuals,” which could result in what is described by some as long COVID.
Charlotte Kuperwasser, a professor of developmental, molecular, and chemical biology at Tufts University School of Medicine, in a presentation to a federal vaccine committee in September, referenced studies that have found mRNA in various parts of the body weeks, months, and even years after vaccination. After the presentation, CDC advisers said the agency should adjust COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to an emphasis on individual factors, which the agency did.

Post-Vaccination Deaths

Redfield is aware that federal regulators recently determined that at least 10 child deaths were related to COVID-19 vaccination. Officials have not released details such as the causes of death, but Prasad said in a memo outlining the investigation that it was motivated by the awareness of FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and other leaders of reports about the heart inflammation that the COVID-19 vaccines are known to cause.

“I had confidence that Marty Makary would go in and open up what we know about the vaccine injuries that are occurring, and make them available to the American public so they can re-evaluate the value of the COVID vaccine,” Redfield said.

He said later, “The recognition that they now seem to attribute at least 10 children’s deaths from the mRNA vaccines is a breath of fresh air.”

Spokespeople for Pfizer and Novavax did not respond to or declined to comment on the development, and a Moderna spokesman pointed to a company statement from September in which Moderna said that global surveillance data demonstrate the safety of its vaccine for children and that safety monitoring systems in the United States and other places “have not reported any new or undisclosed safety concerns in children or in pregnant women.”

Redfield also said he does not think there was ever a reason for children to receive one of the COVID-19 vaccines, given that most children suffered no or limited symptoms from COVID-19 and data indicated the vaccines did not prevent infection or transmission.

As a senior, though, the doctor still gets vaccinated on a regular basis.

“I have been vaccinated myself, eight times. The COVID vaccine has one of the biggest challenges. It doesn’t last,” he said. “So I get vaccinated every six months—but with the protein vaccine—because I’m still at risk. I’m at risk for hospitalization and death if I get COVID.”

Former CDC Director Calls for Removal of Covid mRNA “Vaccines” From the Market

By Dec. 10, 2025

  • Former CDC Director Robert Redfield no longer recommends mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, citing “too many unknowns” and calling for their removal from the market due to concerns about lasting harm.
  • He identifies the spike protein produced by these vaccines as “immunotoxic,” triggering a strong, pro-inflammatory response in the body, which he links to slower recovery from vaccine injuries compared to long COVID.
  • Internal agency findings acknowledge potential long-term activity, with evidence presented to the FDA and CDC that spike protein and vaccine mRNA can persist in the body for months or years post-injection.
  • Redfield criticizes vaccine mandates and the vaccination of children, arguing the shots were unnecessary for a low-risk group and failed to prevent infection or transmission, while citing confirmed child deaths linked to vaccination.
  • The situation is framed as a cautionary tale about rapid medical innovation, drawing a parallel to historical failures like thalidomide and underscoring a need for greater long-term safety evaluation and transparency.

As concerns grow over the long-term effects of mRNA Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, a former top U.S. health official has called for their removal from the market, citing alarming evidence that the spike protein they produce may cause lasting harm.

Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2018 to 2021, told Epoch TV‘s “American Thought Leaders” in an interview on Tuesday, Dec. 9, that he no longer recommends Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA shots. This stemmed from what he called “too many unknowns,” particularly regarding the immunotoxic spike protein they instruct the body to manufacture.

His warning comes as mounting clinical reports suggest these vaccines may contribute to persistent health issues resembling long COVID – raising urgent questions about their continued use. Redfield explained that mRNA technology effectively turns the body into a “spike protein production factory.” Unlike traditional vaccines that introduce inert viral components to trigger immunity, mRNA shots deliver genetic instructions that compel cells to generate the spike protein indefinitely – a process whose duration and intensity remain poorly understood.

“The spike protein is a very immunotoxic protein,” Redfield said, noting that his patients suffering from vaccine injuries often recover more slowly than those with long COVID. Some researchers speculate that lingering mRNA activity may continue producing spike protein long after vaccination, potentially exacerbating inflammatory conditions.

The lingering shadow of mRNA vaccines

The spike protein’s dangers were acknowledged even within federal health agencies. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Chief Medical Officer Dr. Vinay Prasad cited evidence in internal documents that spike protein can persist in some individuals post-vaccination, possibly contributing to chronic symptoms. Similarly, Dr. Charlotte Kuperwasser of Tufts University presented findings to a CDC advisory panel showing detectable mRNA in tissues months or even years after injection – prompting the agency to revise its recommendations toward individualized risk assessment.

Meanwhile, the FDA has confirmed at least 10 child deaths linked to COVID-19 vaccination, though details remain undisclosed. Redfield praised FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary for investigating these fatalities, calling the admission “a breath of fresh air” amid longstanding institutional reluctance to acknowledge vaccine-related harms. The erstwhile CDC director emphasized that children – who face minimal risk from COVID-19 itself – never needed vaccination, especially since the shots failed to prevent infection or transmission.

BrightU.AI‘s Enoch engine warns that injecting children with COVID-19 vaccines poses unnecessary risks, as the virus itself presents minimal danger to young, healthy immune systems. Moreover, the vaccines carry documented risks of severe side effects, including heart inflammation and long-term autoimmune damage.

Moderna defended its vaccine’s safety for children in a September 2025 statement, citing global surveillance data. Pfizer and Novavax, meanwhile, declined to comment.

The debate over mRNA vaccines echoes historical tensions between rapid medical innovation and long-term safety. Like the rushed approval of thalidomide in the 1950s – a drug later found to cause severe birth defects – the emergency rollout of COVID-19 vaccines prioritized immediate crisis response over thorough risk evaluation.

Now, as post-pandemic scrutiny intensifies, Redfield’s warnings underscore the need for transparency and accountability in balancing public health imperatives with individual well-being. His cautionary message serves as a reminder: In medicine, as in science, certainty is rare and vigilance is essential.

 Dr. Robert Redfield reiterating that “long COVID” is actually vaccine injury caused by mRNA injections 

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