Member-only story
The Supreme court cannot erase identity
Both the US and UK Supreme Courts are currently hearing cases which will impact trans rights in their respective countries. In the UK it is addressing a technical point about how trans women are perceived at law, while in the US the court is being asked to decide if paediatric trans healthcare should be banned in states which mandate a ban. Both cases will reshape how their respective nations conceptualise trans identities, with activists on both side trying to frame the narrative. What the courts cannot do is erase identity or demand that trans identities bend to the absolute will of the courts. Time and again courts have ruled against a given identity only for those identities to retreat and retrench, and such a time may soon be at hand.
Trans identities have long been societally shaped by court decisions, with the most prescient being Corbett v Corbett in 1970 when the UK High Court ruled that trans people should be legally treated as their assigned sex at birth. This took 34 years to ameliorate, though British and many common law understandings of trans identities are still buttressed by the ruling. Trans people were not erased from society, rather, they were highly circumscribed beyond the law, with their ability to exist as themselves limited to the values other people projected onto them. You see this in the current debate with ideologues such as Matt Walsh and Helen…
