From our Executive Director, Michelle Uzeta:
This Term, the Supreme Court closed its docket with two decisions that, taken together, reveal very different ideas about who our laws are meant to protect—and who our institutions are willing to make room for.
In Trump v. Barbara, a six-justice majority declined to allow the administration to use executive action to narrow birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented or temporarily visa-holding parents. The decision affirmed an important principle: belonging in this country does not depend on a parent’s immigration status, and no administration should be able to decide by executive order that some children matter less than others from the moment they are born.
On the same day, in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the Court reached a different conclusion about a different group of young people. It upheld state laws excluding transgender girls from girls’ and women’s school sports, concluding that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause prevents states from drawing that line. Whatever the legal framework, the practical message is unmistakable: some students may be categorically excluded from spaces where others begin with a presumption of inclusion.
We are a disability rights organization, and we do not claim special expertise in Title IX. What we do have is 47 years of experience watching this same logic applied to disabled people. For decades, disabled people have heard that our presence in classrooms, workplaces, and in the community is a logistical problem rather than a given: something to be tolerated when convenient and excluded when it is not.
Diversity of bodies, minds, immigration status, and gender is not a threat to our communities. It is one of our greatest strengths. Courts may shape the law, but they do not define who belongs or whose lives have equal worth. A just society is measured by who it makes room for, and DREDF will continue working toward that vision, regardless of which way the Court turns.
