The Trans Sports Ban Cases Are Bigger Than Just Sports

The Supreme Court has heard two cases on transgender women and girl’s ability to participate in school sports after states have issued categorical bans on trans women playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back and Deputy Editor and Senior Contributor at the legal commentary outlet Balls and Strikes, sits down to talk with us about these cases as part of the broad, comprehensive attacks on trans people’s health and wellbeing. 

The Supreme Court justified this discriminatory decision against trans women and girls by arguing that the state cases don't turn on transgender status, but on sex alone—a step toward defining transgender people out of existence. It isn’t just sports and it isn’t just bathrooms; birth certificates, driver's licenses, freedom of travel, ability to work, ability to have healthcare, and ability to learn basic information in schools are all interconnected. The U.S. is also exporting this philosophy abroad through the expanded Global Gag Rule. 

For more information, check out That Aged Well: https://pod.link/1446333312

Transcript

Jennie 0:59

Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Hi, rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So, y'all, it is so gross here today. I am recording on the Friday before y'all hear this, and DC is being really slammed by all the smoke from Canada today. Like, I woke up and I had I have like coverings on my window so I couldn't see out in my bedroom, and I walked out into my living room and like looked up and was shocked at how smoky it was outside, and just like you could see the air, and it was thick and gross, and yeah, it's still like really bad now, but in a sign of like how truly terrible it was this morning. It's so much better, but still is really, really bad. I think we're at "purple" for air quality, and they're basically saying, don't go outside without a N95 mask. So, like, yeah, I was gonna run some errands today, but I think I am just not gonna go outside and probably spend my weekend inside and having a chill weekend if it's gonna be this gross out. You but that's okay. I have a project that I am so close to finishing. My goal for the weekend is to finish this cross stitch project I have been working on. I have plans for it, and I really want to give it to the person next week. They've been having kind of a rough time, and I know they have enjoyed seeing me work on it, so I'm hoping that I'll get it done in time to give it to them next week as a little pick-me-up, but we'll see. I don't know. There's not that much that needs to be done, but always I feel like when I say that and like start doing the work, it's more than I think. It always ends up being more than I think it is. So, we shall see. But my goal is to finish it and give it to them next week. And then I don't think I'll do baking this weekend because it's hot and gross, and I don't want to turn my oven on. I did make the chocolate almond scones that I said I was gonna make last time, and those were pretty delightful. And I only baked like, I don't know, like six of them, and I froze the rest, so I have them, and I can just like pop them in the oven in the morning from frozen and have fresh baked scones, which is pretty delightful. So I have plenty of baked goods. I don't really need anything else, even if it is kind of my outlet. Yeah, so probably do some of the cross stitch, maybe some reading. I need to do laundry, so just all very boring domestic indoor things to not go out and deal with the heat and the smoke. I hope the weather is better where you are and not as smoky. I know my friends and family back home are having to deal with a lot of smoke and heat as well. But yeah, not good. And obviously thinking about all of the people impacted by the actual fires, not just all of the smoke. Yeah, I think maybe I'll just leave it there. I don't feel like I have a ton to update y'all on. It's we've we've talked a lot in the last week with the bonus episode and a regular episode and now this regular episode, so not a lot to add. But I'm really excited for this week's episode. I promised y'all we would do a deeper dive talking about the trans sports case that was in front of the Supreme Court, and I wanted to talk about the case and why it was important, but I also wanted to make sure that we were making the point that it is so much bigger than about just sports. It is really just another line of assault on trans rights in general, and it's really trying to get people okay with taking away rights from trans people before they go for much bigger bites at taking attacking trans rights. So I'm very excited to have with me today Madiba Dennie with Balls and Strikes and the author of The Originalism Trap on to talk about a piece she wrote for Balls and Strikes, talking about why we need to be worried about this and why anti-trans advocates know that this case is not about just sports. So, with that, let's go to my conversation with Madiba. Hi Madiba, thank you so much for being here today.

Madiba 5:14

Hi there, happy to be here.

Jennie 5:16

Before we get started, would you like to take a second and introduce yourself?

Madiba 5:19

Sure thing. My name is Madiba Dennie. I am the author of The Originalism Trap, How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back. And I am the deputy editor and senior contributor at Balls and Strikes, which is a progressive legal commentary outlet, not actually a baseball blog.

Jennie 5:38

Yes, definitely worth checking out. It is one of the places I go to get my court reporting. It's just such a great resource.

Madiba 5:45

Thank you.

Jennie 5:46

And like this feels like forever ago at this point, but it really seemed important to take a step back and talk about the transports cases that were decided at the Supreme Court this term because they're just being reported as sports cases, but it's so much bigger than that. So it felt like we should take the time to do that. But before we can talk about how they're bigger, let's talk about what were these cases.

Madiba 6:11

Yeah, for sure. There were two cases that are sort of collectively the trans sports ban cases that made their way to the Supreme Court. One of them concerned a kid who was like in middle school, really like straight up a youth, who wanted to play sports with her friends, was I believe the only trans student athlete who state the state legislature had any awareness of. So it's like the whole sort of infrastructure of the state government being weaponized against one child. It's state-sponsored bullying, man. Like actually, and the other was related to a student, a college student, who was again, had recently transitioned and was hoping to play school sports as soon as she was eligible to. There were already rules in place about, you know, like, oh, if you are taking estrogen for this amount of time, or like if you if you have like suppressed this hormone for this long or what have you. So, she was thinking, under the guidelines, she would be able to try out. And again, it's not like this was some widespread thing, just like there was just an Olympic team's worth of trans athletes that were just taking over the Idaho schools. Like that's that's not a thing. We're just talking about like one person. And again, we have this, but the state stepped in with this categorical ban saying that trans women and girls cannot play on sports teams that like match their gender identity. And so, one thing about these laws that I want to make clear is that they specifically target trans women and girls. Like it doesn't say that trans boys, for example, might still be allowed to play on boys' teams, but trans girls and trans women they are specifically targeted by by these laws. And normally in our constitutional practice, we don't do that. We we do not single out people for like targeted discrimination. There are, you know, laws about that sort of thing. But apparently now those laws are okay.

Jennie 8:25

Yeah, it's it's wild to me, and like it you would think for this the amount of attention and like the amount of like stories that have been written that there are just like hordes of young trans women trying to play sports and that this is like a major problem, but like it's such a small group of people that is being targeted so with so much attention and so much harm that it is... it's just wild to me.

Madiba 8:53

Like, every sort of premise of the bans and the conversations around them is false. Like it seems like it's some massive problem, we're talking about just a handful of people. It seems like they're, you know, just like straight up dominating these like cisgender girls and women on the field. That's not true. I mean, in one of the instances, the girl was literally just trying to try out for the team and like didn't make it and was like, ah, I hope I can try out again. So , it's not like she's just running roughshod over over these other other youths. So just like a lot of things that don't actually make sense if you try to think about it like in terms of how they justify these. As they say, oh, we have to protect women and girls in sports. And so if you if you think about it along those lines, it doesn't really make sense. How it does make sense is if you think about it as just one part of the broad, like comprehensive attacks on trans people in general, then it makes a lot of sense. And you we even have some quotes of anti-trans activists saying that out loud, saying, oh, you know, like these these sports bans are like a really good entry point to get people comfortable with opposing the LGBT movement. So all of this, all of this sort of like notion that we're talking about just sports, just this one, just this one narrow issue is really intentionally deceptive because it's sort of a gateway drug for broader oppression.

Jennie 10:27

Oh, we're definitely gonna come back and like spend some time in in this area, but maybe we should talk real quick about how they actually justify that that decision, just because it's you're like you said, historically, like you're not supposed to target like one specific group like that. So how did they like justify being like, no, it's okay to discriminate against trans women and girls?

Madiba 10:50

Right. Yeah. With our sort of equal protection jurisprudence, but by which I'm referring to this part of the constitution that says everyone, including trans people, are entitled to equal protection of the laws. We do still recognize in the courts that you know, just like by the nature of how things work, surely some law is gonna affect somebody disproportionately. And so when laws do burden some group in like an unequal way, courts generally ask, okay, well, is there a good enough reason for this particular burden? So, you're sort of like, look at the means and the ends. What are they trying to accomplish here? And what does it look like in practice? You know, you're sort of like suss out what the actual like motive is, see like what's what's going on here, really? Are you trying to do a good thing and it is just a slight imposition on somebody? Or are you are you trying to do a good thing and it's still too large an imposition on somebody? Or are you not even trying to do a good thing and hurting people? And so, this would fall very squarely into that last bucket. But that is not how Justice Brett Kavanaugh described it. Kavanaugh, credibly accused sex pest, but who nonetheless positions himself as some sort of champion of women and girls, you know, like defender of girls' sports, loves talking about how he coaches girls' basketball. So, he goes on at length in the opinion about how sports is the good reason. Like that's the - leave it to Brett, right? Yeah. He he says like multiple times in the opinion, he's like, sports are different. You know, we're talking about like a highly competitive and generally zero-sum games. It says from from at every step of the way, whether it's someone making a team to getting an athletic scholarship, someone is gonna benefit and someone's gonna lose. And he just talks about, you know, how great sports are, you know, how much how much benefits like women and girls have uh from participating in sports, which sure they do. And that would you would think that would also apply to trans women and girls, but like that's all I was thinking the whole time he was saying that. I was like, and that is why the young trans girls and women want to play sports. Right, right. But he says this is a constitutionally justified burden because of the state's interest in ensuring safety and competitive fairness, which is also, you know, pretty condescending to cisgender women and girls that are like, 'oh, the big scary trans boogeyman is gonna get you. And your fragile female sensibilities just couldn't possibly handle the defeats of being crushed by this trans person.' It's yeah, just really patronizing this idea that like we have to protect these these girls. And again, it's sort of it's like a whole lot of nonsense. There's like no evidence really to support any of that. And a lot of evidence to support the fact that this was really driven by animus against trans people. It had nothing to do with keeping cisgender girls safe, but about isolating and harassing and surveilling transgender people, starting with trans women and girls here, as again a sort of entry point to be able to police trans people in all sorts of ways and curb all sorts of rights. Because we are sort of cementing this precedent where you can go after trans people and the court will, you know, accept any sort of bogus reason you give them, like regardless of how much support that actually has, and regardless of how much evidence there is of discrimination at work, because the court didn't get into any of that. In fact, I would I would go so far as to say they made it seem like anti-trans discrimination couldn't exist, because according to Kavanaugh and the rest of the Republicans on the court who joined him, the laws that Idaho and West Virginia had in these cases don't actually turn on transgender status. They turn on sex alone and just don't make an exception for a what he called a "subclass of biological males who identify as female." Again, really gross. I'm sorry for using this language. It's just, you know, trying to say like how he put it. And my reading of that is okay, so you're basically defining trans people out of existence. So you're saying trans people don't exist, so anti-trans discrimination doesn't exist either, which is a great way to, you know, make room for lots more anti-trans discrimination under law. And again, like this didn't come out of nowhere. This is building on some precedents that the court has, you know, already been laying down. Like, notably, we saw this in Skrmetti, which was the case about gender-affirming care, where again, it very clearly turned on sex in in that case. It was like if you if you are a kid who you know wants or needs like gender-affirming care, like a boy can get it, like a like a cisgender boy can access this care in order to like better conform with like the idea of maleness, but a trans boy cannot. So it's like, you know, if you were assigned male at birth, for instance, and you know, you feel some kind of way because like you're kind of scrawny or like your voice is high-pitched, or you're like something like not developing any facial hair or whatever, you're allowed to take testosterone. But if you were like assigned female at birth and you know, you're you're a trans boy, and you also would like testosterone, then you can't have it. Yeah. So it seems like very clearly, you know, this is this law by definition, like, it turns on sex. Like, that is the classification at work here. But in that opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that sex had nothing to do with it. We were just talking about a medical practice that states are well within their rights to regulate, because it has to do with health and safety. And, you know, it was about age as well. We were talking about minors as opposed to talking about any sort of like sex differences. So, really just torturing the English language to pretend that what is very obviously happening isn't happening at all. And, you know, I think I think you see a lot of this pretending in the majority opinion in Scrimetti, in the majority opinion in the new trans sports cases. But if you, you know, take a peek at the concurrence that Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the in the BPJ case, there's no more pretense, there's no more pretending. It's just really straightforward, striking anti-trans bigotry, just sort of like going off. And it is, you know, that it has like no law to it. It's just like, here are Clarence Thomas's thoughts about trans people. And so it's very clear, you know, that this is really a fraudulent sort of like exercise. It's like a bad cover-up of what they're really doing here, which is creating this legal runway for anti-trans discrimination.

Jennie 18:26

Yeah, and I also think, you know, they're doing it like in our name, right? They're saying they're doing it to protect women and girls because we care about women and girls and we care about women and girls sports, but like, could they name like some female athletes or like women's sports teams, and like are they actually supporting that? Like, that's no.

Madiba 18:46

But also like in the in the same way that like when you're when you know, the sort of like stereotypical guy who's like, oh, you're you're a fan of of Metallica, like name three of their albums. Yeah, yeah. So, it's like, oh, you care about women's sports, like like tell me about Megan Rapinoe's World Cup appearances, or like, who's your favorite player on Washington Spirit?

Jennie 19:10

Exactly. And like, but also like this is wrong for the very clear reason that it's discriminating against trans people, trans people should be able to play sports, should be able to access the healthcare they need, but also thinking through they're using women and girls as the like we want to protect them, but like also that's who's gonna be harmed. Because if you are a woman who isn't presenting in a certain way, or a girl who is presenting in a certain way, you've already seen cases where like opposing teams are challenging that that's a trans person, and like, how do you prove you're not trans? Like, that's just traumatic for like the women and girls who are not presenting in in a particular way. Yeah, yeah.

Madiba 19:54

Yeah, and that's I think that's a really important function of these of these laws as well. Like, I guess it is a big part of it is like the animus towards trans people, but I guess that also does sort of like fall within the ideological project of just policing gender roles, yeah. Defining, you know, like, this is what appropriate femininity is, you know, like what what the correct way to exist as a given gender is, and we can use the law, can use, you know, like the force of government to coerce people into presenting the ways we think they should, or otherwise forcing them out of public life. And just, you know, numbers-wise, since trans people are such a small uh subset of the population, this is gonna affect a lot of cis women and girls too. And it is, you know, likely going to do so on racial, racial lines. Like, I think, you know, we see this sort of stereotyping and accusations often against women of color being like, oh, like she's you know, like, "is that really a she?" Like "she's too buff," or like, you know, "she, like, looks too masculine" or what have you. And whenever we start going down the path of saying like what a woman looks like or is, then there are gonna be a lot of women excluded from that, right? Yeah, we are going to inevitably get to a point of like, oh, when we say woman, what you really mean is like a thin, cisgender, white woman, like blonde, capable of giving birth, and like if you and like wants to give birth, and if you don't want to, tough luck, and that you have to. Yeah. So it is, yeah, just creating this very narrow idea and allowing the state to enforce that. Because again, you know, in practice, how are some of these laws gonna work? We're gonna have like challenges. Are you gonna be like, you know, lifting up girls' skirts to assess, you know, like do you have any visible reproductive organs down there before you can play basketball with your friends? It is invasive and traumatic and insulting and acting as if this has anything to do with helping anyone's life...it truly does not.

Jennie 22:22

And like emboldening who's gonna enforce it too, right? Like, wasn't oh, I've like lost all track of time, but I feel like last week there was like a case out of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where there was like a young Black girl who like got stopped in the bathroom by by a person. And it's like, why did this person feel like this had anything to do with them and that they were in a position where they should be challenging where this young person is just trying to go to the bathroom? Right. Just like let people pee in peace.

Madiba 22:53

Yeah, and we've seen some. We've seen some legislation popping up that you know empowers randos to, like, kick people out of bathrooms or even file complaints in court. "I've been personally victimized by a person I thought was trans using the bathroom near me. Please give me $5,000." Uh, which is outrageous. And on in so many ways, right? The idea that this is a legal offense that a person should be compensated for, the idea that you can you can and should deputize just you know random busybodies on the the street to, I don't know, be these like potty protectors— it's absurd.

Jennie 23:40

Yeah, I also think like you know, you've talked about how it is so much bigger than just sports, right? We talked about how it's impacting health and other areas, and I just think through how these are the same people and taking the same steps that the anti-abortion folks were taking, right? They were finding the weakness where they could like jam the tip in to start breaking off so they could get the whole thing, right? So they started with young people because attacking young people's ability to access abortion or young people's ability to access care or play sports is the like easy place that they can like start to chip off some people. And then once that started, okay, then like also they shouldn't be able to access care or people a little older or people on Medicare, earn Medicaid, or like this and this until all of a sudden it's banned. Right.

Madiba 24:35

We've yeah, we've definitely seen this same sort of playbook, you know. Like you mentioned the Medicare, Medicaid. I think we've already seen some cases start bubbling up like that, where it's like, oh, you know, there's no right to trans healthcare. And so, surely that means that the government doesn't have an obligation to fund it.

Jennie 24:56

Yeah.

Madiba 24:56

So we can just cut that off from health state healthcare programs, which again, you know, trans people disproportionately lower income and more likely to rely on these sort of like state healthcare programs. So this is... really I don't think it's a stretch to say these are genocidal policies because you know, if we know that like gender-affirming care improves people's health, improves like depression, decreases suicidality, if you know that and then you take those things away anyway, you're trying to get people killed. And you know, if you deputize people to pull you know police the gender of kids at games or like in bathrooms, you are you know setting people up to be you know victims of interpersonal violence. So I think these are and you know, Trump again, a big example of always saying the quiet part out loud. After the B.P.J. ruling, he was like, oh, this is a win for you know, like our administration's agenda of like "eliminating transgender insanity." So again, like pretty openly eliminationist language. And you have to you have to look at these things together. Like it's not just sports, it's not just bathrooms, it's also like birth certificates and driver's licenses, and you know, freedom of travel, like ability to work, ability to have health care. There's just ability to, you know, have basic information taught in schools. Just it is such a wide-ranging project.

Jennie 26:39

Yeah.

Madiba 26:40

And it is sort of a mistake to think, oh, this is just sports, and it's okay because there are good reasons for it, because there are not good reasons for it, and it's not just sports.

Jennie 26:52

And I also would be a terrible global advocate if I didn't mention that we are also exporting these policies with when the most recent global gag rule expansion targeted LGBTQI groups and saying they wouldn't give any groups funding that did any work with LGBTQI or gender. So really targeting this community abroad as well.

Madiba 27:15

Yeah. And you mentioning that reminds me as well about the sort of cutting any mention of LGBTQ people out from funding for health research and scientific research. So again, threatening lives. Like, this is a homicidal administration.

Jennie 27:36

Like, or just gender in general. Like we people are really finding you can't use gender in any sort of context if you want to try and get funding or anything. I feel like I heard a story about in the global side [that] there was a group with like PEPFAR funding and we're doing transferring money for young people for I think like peer educators, and they lost funding because trans transfer, like I like it just like wild. This is so foolish, it's so foolish.

Madiba 28:13

Oh my goodness, like I'm just I'm just struck by the silliness of that. Yeah, just this happening to use the word transfer, and they're like, not on my watch.

Jennie 28:27

Okay. It is wild. Okay, so this is definitely not the end of this. Like, there is more in the pipeline and more that will be happening. What are you kind of keeping an eye on right now?

Madiba 28:39

Hmm. Let's see. Oof. That's so many things, right? Yeah, yeah. That's a little tough. There's so much happening all the time. So, I guess one thing, a good thing to be on the lookout for is how people are trying to push back in states, like individual states, like since there has been this, you know, full not just retreat from protection at the federal level, but like actively attacking trans people's rights and you know and uh other people's rights too. Seeing like what work is being done near near you, like in individual states or cities to still try still try take care of people. How are they trying to protect their residents? Not all places are, but some places are. So, it's good to see what's happening where. Like, are there any strategies that could be replicated somewhere else? Because again, we we certainly know that the far right is replicating strategies, like, similarly, same type of ways that they used abortion as a wedge issue and tried to say, oh, this isn't about you know people's bodily autonomy, this is about just you know what the state has the authority to do to protect, you know, like regulate medical procedures. That's the same kind of stuff we're seeing with these anti-gender affirming care rulings. So, in the same way that they can copy paste people who care about people, who care about rights and liberties, they can they can similarly see, you know, what's working where. Yeah, you know, how can we how can we learn from one another? So that's I think that's a good thing to be on the lookout for.

Jennie 30:24

I think one of those those things we're seeing, again, stealing from the the pro-abortion playbook, is seeing shield laws cov covering gender-affirming care also starting to pass in some states.

Madiba 30:36

We are seeing that really, really wrankle and get under the skin of right-wing folks on the in the like abortion sphere. So, we can go further.

Jennie 30:51

Yeah.

Madiba 30:51

We can do that for for trans care as well.

Jennie 30:53

Well, I guess that leads me to think of when y'all are hearing this, it'll be last week, but this just happened. The Todd Blanche hearing, and so thinking through Shield laws and what they have done to protect mailing abortion pills and getting abortion in the hands of people who need it, even when they are in states where it was banned. But Blanche stated his support for the Comstock Act, which would stop that. Yeah, yeah.

Madiba 31:19

Yeah, the Comstock Act is this super old timey zombie law is the way to describe it because it has been, you know, on the books but unenforced for oh my goodness, like a hundred... how many years? At least it was on the books, like, 150-ish? Yeah, yeah. And had been had been just collecting dust, but the the right wing has been working to reanimate this dead law so that it can be used to stop anything quote unquote obscene from being sent through the mail. So trying to prevent people, basically, it's like a backdoor way to implement like an abortion ban or like all sorts of all sorts of bans, really, since obscene is I feel like a pretty flexible word. Yeah. So so uh that is definitely gonna be imminently becoming an important front since Blanche seemed you know very open to trying to reinvigorate that. And we know that you know, some people on the Supreme Court, like Justice Clarence Thomas for one, has been trying to like push for that as well, like calling for calling for the Comstock Act to be used.

Jennie 32:34

Yeah, it's one of those things, like he really likes to telegraph the like, hey, also he and like I just always think back to like the Dobbs decision when he was like, well, I mean, also there's Griswold and all of these other like things that you know people should start to consider to go after.

Madiba 32:54

If there's one thing, if there's one thing to appreciate about Clarence Thomas, it's his explicitness. Because in the Dobbs majority opinion, Alito was taking pains and pretending that this would be a narrow ruling. He was like, oh, you know, this is just about abortion. Abortion is different, in much the same way that Kavanaugh was saying, you know, this is just about sports. He was saying, this is just about abortion, you know, like nothing we say today should be taken to mean that it would apply to this, that, and the other. And then in the concurrence, Clarence Thomas is like, of course it does. He's like, who y'all kidding? Obviously.

Jennie 33:33

Well, and you can also like still use Alito's reasoning because people are then they're just saying that these forms of birth control are abortion. So, like, yes, we should just go ahead and ban the all these abortifations that are not that they are.

Madiba 33:50

Just we try and just lie to people and use the use the same old trick.

Jennie 33:57

Okay. So, now that we've talked about all of the like bad, it feels like there's so much bad, but we did get to some good, like states, there are good things states are doing to protect trans access to healthcare. What are some of the things the audience can do in this moment to get involved?

Madiba 34:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I think one thing that would be useful at the sort of like more local level, a lot of a lot of states elect their judges. So, we have these horrible justices at the Supreme Court. We have like Trump appointing so many judges in the in the lower courts who you know are being being selected for because they're terrible, uh, and like being confirmed by a Senate that does not reflect, does not represent a majority of the country in any way. But at the at the local level, you might have more opportunities to, you know, change what your judiciary looks like and you know get judges who are willing to defend trans people and trans rights and you know in embrace a different understanding of the constitution. And some states have procedures where you can push for ballot initiatives and so you can create new ways of fighting to protect trans people's rights in various ways with new laws. Things do not have to be left up to the federal government. We're also just gonna have to be creative. Like, I think in the same way that the right is looking for any kind of way to harass and assault people, we have to think about any kind of way to defend them and then sort of go beyond defending as well. Like it's not as I want us to get out of just a defensive posture, but try to think about like what are our like affirmative needs, like what would be good and call for it, shift that Overton window. We need to not let the right sort of like define the terms, sort of like in the way they try to frame these trans sports bands as like jest about sports. We need to say, you know, what like what it actually is and what it's not, and sort of define the fight for ourselves.

Jennie 36:18

Yeah, as somebody who is from Wisconsin, I can appreciate how a judicial election can make a huge difference in your in your state's ability to exercise their rights. Uh so it is something very near and dear to my heart. And and that goes like all the way down to like local judges. Like, I feel like I've talked about this real recently on the podcast, but also just worth mentioning again in case you hadn't heard it, is that you know, when you have like judicial bypass laws for like abortion, they are seeing local judges, and that is who is deciding if that young person can get an abortion or get access to care or how painful the process is that they are going through. So, it matters all the way down.

Madiba 37:03

Yeah, and something else I'm thinking of, and it sort of goes goes along with creativity, and I absolutely think we should push like for like big substantive things, but also like you know, don't be afraid to take advantage of procedural weirdness. Like, I feel like a lot of Mitch McConnell's success over the 5,000 years he's been alive has been by manipulating the existing procedures. So , we can you know look and see how can these be you know pressed for success.

Jennie 37:38

Madiba, I was so great talking to you. Thank you so much for being here.

Madiba 37:42

Thank you for having me. Always a pleasure.

Jennie 37:45

Okay, y'all. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Madiba. I had so much fun talking to her. Yeah, it was such a fun conversation, and I will see everybody next week. Bye. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com, or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter, or @reprofb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all.