Agreed, our SCOTUS shot down Roe, so we can predict which way they will go.
I don't want to get into a big derail here, but I do think it's important to point out that SCOTUS was challenged with respect to Roe on the basis of a prior interpretation of existing amendments. Roe got into place because a prior court interpreted a line in the 14th amendment such that it banning abortion was deemed to be depriving a person of
liberty without due process. Opposition to that interpretation has been around since it was first made, with opponents viewing that abortion deprives a person of life without due process (in this case, the person in question is the fetus - let's not get into whether that view holds water here). The overturning of Roe rests upon the view the ability to terminate a human life is not, and has never been, a privacy-based
right. SCOTUS ruled that the prior interpretation was inappropriate and that laws regarding abortion were not a matter of
constitutionally protected liberty. They passed determinations regarding abortion back to the states to make laws as they deemed appropriate for their constituents.
I don't like the result of that decision, but I don't disagree with the legal basis for the ruling. Basing the entire thing on a challengeable interpretation of privacy as an implied component of liberty was shaky to begin with. If congress had done it's damned job and actually made an actual LAW, passed as legislation, we'd be in an entirely different situation. Congress still has the ability to create an actual law regarding abortion that would be applicable throughout the entire country - and as a law it would be massively less subject to reinterpretation. In order to overturn such a law, challengers would need to get SCOTUS to agree that having a law defining when abortion is and is not allowable is in and of itself unconstitutional.
There's a parallel with Title IX here, where some courts as well as Biden (via EO)
interpreted the word "sex" to mean "gender identity". That interpretation is challengeable - and in this case I completely agree with Trump's interpretation that sex means sex, it does not mean special feelings inside one's brain.
But in the here and now, my fair State has its laws laid out bare, and my Governor literally incorporated it into law in such a way as to make it extra difficult to be easily flipped. Socially, sex and gender are virtually the same, with interpretation favoring gender as the operative concept.
Out of curiosity - is it actually law? I mean, is there actually a legislatively passed statute that expressly equates sex and gender identity such that access to single sex spaces, services, and athletics is based on a person's self-perception of themselves? Or is it an interpretation incorporated via governor order, comparable to an EO?
If it's actually a for-realsies law, then there's some footing in NJ for this to stay in place until overturned by legislative act. Although it definitely puts NJ schools at risk, given that the current executive interpretation of "sex" in Title IX has reverted back to actually meaning biological sex. Doesn't mean NJ can't run with their law, but it does mean that their schools could lose federal funding.
Agreed, it's the entirety of the discussion. Woman has two primary definitions that I cited upthread: adult human female, and person who thinks they are, +/-. Which one prevails is the whole shebang, or maybe (as I advocate) a mash-up with clear limitations.
One of those definitions is literal, the other is figurative. Your view of a mash-up essentially allows a figurative, metaphorical meaning to have as much
weight in policy as a literal meaning.
As an illustration of the challenge your approach causes, let's look at
definitions for the word "citizen". Let's NOT get into a derail about this, it's intended solely to highlight the implicit contradiction of trying to simultaneously hold a literal and a figurative meaning in policy. Here are the two definitions that are pertinent:
- a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it
- an inhabitant of a city or town
If we were to try to simultaneously hold both of those as true in policy, then there would end up being confusion because it leads to contradictory outcomes. For example, if the figurative meaning were held as true, it would imply that anyone who lives in a town in the US therefore has the right to vote, and has full constitutional protections, and cannot be removed from the country because they now have a legal right to be here on the basis that the live here regardless of whether they ever had legal standing to be in the country. Allowing that figurative meaning to hold any power at all in policy would completely undermine and invalidate every single immigration law we have.
That's pretty much the same thing that happens when you allow the figurative meaning of woman to hold power in policy - it undermines and invalidates every single law or statute we have that grants equality or protection to females.
