Dem
51
GOP
49
Regardless of where you stand on trans equality, we've got one item for you today that's good news, and one item today that's bad news.
First up, as we noted in yesterday's posting, the Biden administration has engaged in some creative interpretation of Title IX, so as to apply it to trans students. Since trans people were barely on the radar in 1972, you cannot say that Congress intended the legislation to apply to them. On the other hand, you also cannot say that Congress DID NOT intend the legislation to apply to them. There are a bunch of lawsuits pushing back against the new interpretation, and as we noted yesterday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty put the new rules on hold in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho. Shortly after yesterday's post went live, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves issued a ruling that added six more states to the list: Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia.
In case you are wondering, Doughty is a Donald Trump appointee and Reeves is a George W. Bush appointee. However, the legal issues here are tricky enough that you can't reflexively assume this is naked partisanship rearing its head. It certainly could be naked partisanship, but it could also be that times have changed, and it's time to figure out what a half-century-old law means in a modern context. The careful reader might also notice that this is implicitly an argument against originalism, since the members of Congress in 1972 barely knew about trans people, and the folks who wrote the Constitution knew even less. Put another way, if you can't make a compelling, evidence-based argument for what James Madison would have thought about trans people using bump-stock-enhanced guns to acquire mifepristone, then originalism is bullsh**.
The second story, meanwhile, involves Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride (D), a trans woman who is running for Congress. Given how very blue the state is, the primaries are the de facto election for the next person to hold Delaware's only House seat, which is being vacated by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D) as she tries for a promotion to the U.S. Senate seat that is being vacated by Sen. Tom Carper (D). McBride's only competition in the primary was Eugene Young (D), but this weekend, he dropped out of the race.
What that means is that, roughly 3 weeks before the filing deadline (July 9), there is only one Democrat running for that seat (i.e., McBride) and there are no Republicans. It is possible some other Democrat could jump in, and somehow make up for lost time. It is possible a Republican could jump in and somehow use transphobia to overcome Delaware's blueness (the state is D+7). It is possible that someone could mount a successful write-in campaign. But these are all longshots, and so the odds are very high that the House of Representatives is about to get its first openly trans member. It could become a certainly on Sept. 10, when Delawareans head to the polls. (Z)