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Ms. Magazine op-ed: The Supreme Court Decided Who Gets to Be a Girl. We Disagree.

June 30. 2026


Ms. Magazine published an op-ed written by Executive Director Noreen Farrell about today’s SCOTUS decision allowing states to ban transgender students from playing girls’ and women’s school sports.

With the subtitle The Supreme Court just put every girl who runs too fast or looks too butch on trial. That’s not protection—that’s a witch hunt, the piece explores how the ruling harms not just trans students, but cisgender women and girls too:

“‘Gender verification’ testing puts every girl who doesn’t perform femininity to someone else’s satisfaction directly in the crosshairs. And we know exactly who gets scrutinized most: Black and brown girls who don’t conform to white-centric norms, who have faced elevated suspicion in athletics for generations. …

We have watched this machinery run before. … It has always been used to shrink what women and girls are allowed to be. …

Women’s rights and trans rights are not competing causes. They never were. They share a common enemy: the rigid gender hierarchy that has always used ‘protection’ as a cover story for control.”

READ THE OP-ED

 

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