Gendered Language
30th August 2023
Last month, the Supreme Court declined to review a federal appeals court ruling that would grant certain protections to persons suffering from gender dysphoria under the Americans With Disabilities Act. The decision itself will further entrench “gender identity” as the newest protected category under civil rights law, laying the table for numerous infringements of religious and civil liberties for Americans on the other side of this divide. But there is an even more unsettling and revealing aspect of this case: simply by discussing “transgender persons” as if the term had a stable and meaningful referent, conservative and liberal justices alike revealed that they had accepted a fundamental error in reasoning that threatens to undermine the very heart of American justice and America itself.