The Supreme Court hearing on transgender athletes hit a wall this week: The attorney bringing the case could not define "woman" for the court.

Transgender athletes are finally getting their day in court.

The highest court in the land has agreed to hear two suits brought by transgendered athletes who were or are being denied access to compete in the competitive classification category that matches their self-identification, rather than sex assigned at birth.

Both suits were brought by transgendered women who were assigned male at birth but want to be allowed to compete in female sports events and catergories. While many human biologists and scientists have admitted that male puberty conveys many undeniable physical advantages in terms of size, strength, muscle mass, and many other physical factors from bone density to the ability to withstand a concussion, transgendered athletes have plenty of supporters.

Unfortunately for this latter group, hopes that the Supreme Court might consider the barring of these athletes a violation of their rights under the law were severely diminished this week.

Asked by one of the Supreme Court justices to define the term “woman” for the purposes of the court’s review, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs could not give one.

Without a clear understanding of what qualifies someone to complete in the female category, how can the court judge who ought to be excluded?

Not even Justices obviously sympathetic to the plaintiffs in the case could offer much guidance. And without such a basic definition, it’s hard to see how the cases can proceed.

For progressives, including Supreme Court Justices, setting any definition of “woman” presents an impossible conundrum. Many progressives long ago accepted that nothing can disqualify anyone who self-identifies as a woman.

Not surgery, not hormones, not history, not requirement of culturally accepted standards for “female” as far as dress, presentation, or mannerisms. Nothing.

People who identify as trans are to be subject to no “proving” of any kind.

If a 60-year old, five-time felon serving life in prison for murder and rape says he is a woman on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m., she is a woman from that moment forward — unless she says otherwise, it is assumed. Or so progressive activists and politicians have been assuring us.

But if there is no definition for “woman”, surely there can be no further segregation in sports of any kind. 

“Well, to pick up on the issue of discrimination on the basis of transgender status, let me just go back to — let me go to some basics,” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked Kathleen Hartnett, the attorney for one of the plaintiffs, transgender woman Lindsay Hecox, on Tuesday. “Do you agree that a school may have separate teams for a category of students classified as boys and a category of students classified as girls?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” replied Ms. Hartnett.

“If it does that, then is it not necessary for there to be, for equal protection purposes, if that is challenged under the Equal Protection Clause, an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?” Alito asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Hartnett said.

“And what is that definition? For equal protection purposes, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?” Justice Alito prompted.

After a brief sputter of “Sorry, I misunderstood your question” and a nonsensical “I think that the underlying enactment, whatever it was, the policy, the law, the — we’d have to have an understanding of how the state or the government was understanding that term to figure out whether or not someone was excluded,” Ms. Hartnett admitted what she had to know was a terrible blow to her case.

“We do not have a definition for the court.”

“And we don’t take issue with the — we’re not disputing the definition here,” Hartnett added hastily. “What we’re saying is that the way it applies in practice is to exclude birth sex males categorically from women’s teams and that there’s a subset of those birth sex males where it doesn’t make sense to do so according to the state’s own interest.”

“Well, how can you — how can a court determine whether there’s discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection purposes?” Justice Alito inquired. 

“I think here we just know — we basically know that the — that they’ve identified pursuant to their own statute, Lindsay qualifies as a birth sex male, and she’s being excluded categorically from the women’s teams as the statute. So we’re taking the statute’s definitions as we find them and we don’t dispute them. We’re just trying to figure out do they create an equal protection problem.”

It wasn’t a strong finish.

“We just know” and “we basically know” are not acceptable parameters for the court.

Without a basic definition of “woman” and “girl” how can anyone determine in a court of law who is to be excluded or included from sports categories?

This question couldn’t have been a surprise. The attorneys bringing these suits had to know it was likely to come up. These cases have been pending for years. 

Why weren’t the attorneys prepared for such an obvious question?

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)