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What SCOTUS Got Wrong on Birthright Citizenship
The issue isn't whether America inherited English legal language; it's whether it inherited England's understanding of political membership.
Center Right
The Dispatch
What We Got Wrong in June
Center Right
A list of corrections issued by The Dispatch last month.
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BizPac Review
Best political cartoons: Well, doctor, what have we got?
Best political cartoons of the day: In case you missed it:
Far Right
Blaze Media
Women’s sports finally got a reality check
In a decisive ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court has settled the most consequential legal question for women's sports in a generation — affirming what biology and fairness have always made clear: Women's sports must remain protected spaces for female athletes.The court ruled 9-0 that Title IX — the federal law that ensures equal opportunities for women in education and sports — and 6-3 that the Equal Protection Clause allow states to protect female athletes with sex-based categories in sports.Changing the culture means rejecting the lie that biology is bigotry.The decisions in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. mark a watershed. The court recognized that sex is a biological fact, not a feeling, and that it shapes athletic performance in ways no paperwork or policy can undo.Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that Title IX "cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex."By upholding the constitutionality of state laws safeguarding sex-based categories in athletics, the court has reinforced the rights of girls and women in the 27 states that have already passed protective legislation. This is a win worth celebrating.No longer will biological males like B.P.J. dominate girls’ shot-put competitions in West Virginia next season. The ruling draws a firm line: Sex is not a feeling, and paperwork and lip gloss cannot rewrite reality.Female athletes deserve fair competition, safe locker rooms, and equal opportunity — the principles Title IX was built to protect and that reflect simple scientific truth. The majority opinion emphasizes immutable biological differences in strength, speed, and physiology and rejects the claim that gender identity can override sex in the context of physical athletics.Yet this victory, meaningful as it is, remains incomplete.In the remaining 23 states — California chief among them — business as usual persists. Biological males can still claim girls’ and women’s titles, taking podium spots from female athletes they outperform.The patchwork nature of this decision means fairness remains geographically contingent. But a girl’s right to compete on a level playing field should not depend on her zip code.We have made progress. President Trump’s 2025 executive order provided critical momentum, functioning with the force of law and prompting the NCAA to reaffirm that women’s categories are for women. The International Olympic Committee has committed to protecting the female category starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Ballot initiatives in blue states like Colorado and Washington this November will let voters decide directly whether girls deserve their own sports. In Maine, fathers have mobilized to put the Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine initiative on the ballot so their daughters can have the same opportunities their mothers did.These developments are encouraging. But the challenges remain formidable.The NWSL and the WNBA still operate without meaningful sex verification. Professional leagues, private events such as the Boston Marathon, and college athletics remain fractured. Birth certificates — the only proof of sex required by the NCAA — can be changed in 44 states. Given the fungible nature of paperwork and other IDs, documents cannot substitute for actual biological testing at the highest levels of sport.Blue states continue to defy federal guidance, treating fairness as optional. Interstate competition creates impossible inconsistencies. A female athlete protected in Tennessee could still face unfair qualification scenarios against out-of-state males if she advances to national competition.How is that fair?The deeper truth is that a Supreme Court ruling can set a legal boundary, but it cannot change the culture by itself. That work falls to all of us — parents, athletes, coaches, journalists, and everyday citizens who refuse to stay silent.RELATED: Democrats can’t escape their trans problem Kirby Lee/Getty ImagesFor too long, institutions have prioritized feelings, optics, and activist pressure over the safety, dignity, and opportunity of girls and women. We saw a version of the same pattern in the gymnastics sex abuse scandals I helped expose decades ago: Adults in power looked the other way while vulnerable athletes paid the price.The Safe Sport Act now exists to protect young athletes from abuse, but the coaching culture has not changed enough, and abuse still occurs. SafeSport faces a four-year backlog of abuse reports.Changing the culture means rejecting the lie that biology is bigotry.It means parents showing up at school board meetings, statehouses, and ballot initiatives with unrelenting clarity. It means athletes — female and male — finding the courage to speak the truth even when it costs them.
Right
Reason.com
Gavin Newsom Is Totally Wrong About Taxes
Robby Soave and Amber Duke discuss Gavin Newsom's turn toward socialism.
Center Right
Blaze Media
The Supreme Court came to the wrong conclusion on the 14th Amendment
Chief Justice John Roberts begins the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship opinion in Westminster in 1608 with Calvin’s Case and the English law of royal subjectship.I would begin in Philadelphia in 1776.English law rested upon allegiance to the Crown. The American Republic would rest upon the consent of a self-governing people.Between those two places — and those two moments — lies the American Revolution. And the Revolution changed more than who governed America. It changed the very foundation of political membership.That is the central problem with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara. The court’s opinion is learned, careful, and historically rich. Chief Justice Roberts traces the English doctrine of jus soli through Calvin’s Case, Blackstone, a substantial body of antebellum American authorities, and finally United States v. Wong Kim Ark. It may well become the definitive defense of the conventional understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. But it answers the wrong question.The issue is not whether America inherited English legal language. It plainly did. The issue is whether America also inherited England’s understanding of political membership.The majority assumes that the American Revolution left the English understanding of political membership largely intact. The dissents argue that the Revolution rejected that understanding and replaced it with an American conception of citizenship grounded in the consent of the governed. That is the real disagreement in this case.A new creedUnder English common law, nearly everyone born within the king’s dominions became a natural-born subject. Birth within the sovereign’s territory created permanent allegiance to the Crown because the child was born under the king’s protection. That doctrine made sense in a monarchy. It reflected a world of subjects, sovereigns, dominions, and perpetual allegiance.But the United States is not a monarchy.The Declaration of Independence did more than announce separation from Great Britain. It rejected the political philosophy upon which English subjectship rested. Jefferson’s words — that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” — were not mere rhetorical flourishes. They announced a new theory of political legitimacy. The Declaration’s closing words made the rejection of perpetual allegiance explicit: The new states were “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”English law rested upon allegiance to the Crown. The American Republic would rest upon the consent of a self-governing people.That revolutionary transformation should have been central to the Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment.Instead, the majority largely assumes that English subjectship and American citizenship belong to the same constitutional lineage. Roberts proves an important proposition: England recognized birthright subjectship. But he does not prove the decisive one: that Americans who had repudiated monarchy intended, less than a century later, to constitutionalize the English law of royal subjectship as the definition of citizenship in a republic.Mere obedience to law is not the same thing as complete political allegiance.Justice Joseph Story helps explain why that distinction matters. Story was steeped in English law, but he was not merely Blackstone with an American accent. His great constitutional project was to explain how inherited English legal concepts had been adapted to the institutions and principles of an American republic. He stands as a bridge between the common-law inheritance and American constitutionalism.That is the bridge missing from the majority’s account. Roberts reads the inherited legal tradition largely as a line of continuity from Calvin’s Case to Wong Kim Ark. But the American constitutional genealogy runs along a different path: the Declaration of Independence, Story’s adaptation of inherited law to republican constitutionalism, Lincoln’s reaffirmation of the Declaration as the nation’s first principle, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the 14th Amendment.Abraham Lincoln understood this better than anyone. He did not treat the Declaration as a mere political manifesto. Lincoln treated it as the nation’s statement of principle. In his famous meditation on the Constitution and the Union, Lincoln described the Declaration’s principle of liberty as the “apple of gold,” with the Constitution as the “picture of silver” framed around it. The frame was made not to conceal or destroy the apple, but to preserve it.That is precisely the point here. The Constitution must be read as law. But it is American law, not English law. And the 14th Amendment must be read as part of the Constitution’s effort to vindicate the principles of the Declaration after the catastrophe of slavery and Dred Scott.Preserving the cornerstoneThe Reconstruction Congress was not attempting to preserve English constitutionalism.
Right
Washington Examiner
The Supreme Court gets it wrong on birthright citizenship. Why Trump was right to ban it
Simply put, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship ban was both legally and historically wrong, as well as a misguided interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Since Trump’s inauguration, he has issued a slew of executive orders but none more controversial than banning the birthright citizenship of illegal immigrants. In […]
Center Right
Reason.com
Neil Gorsuch Urges Supreme Court To Correct 2 Wrong Turns That Undermined Civil Liberties
The justice criticizes the Court’s endorsement of coercive plea bargaining and its embrace of dubious Fourth Amendment doctrines.
Center Right
New York Post
Bill Maher got the award, but Trump’s free-speech impact is the real prize
In Trump’s Washington, a rebel like Bill Maher can be given his due — which can’t be said in precincts that cultural liberals control.
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