{"id":2535858,"date":"2026-01-14T02:24:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-40\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T02:25:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:25:59","slug":"alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-40\/","title":{"rendered":"Alito&#8217;s &#8216;What Is A Woman?&#8217; Question Leaves Leftist Attorney Flailing"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Falitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-40%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2535858&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>At oral argument in Little v. Hecox (consolidated with West Virginia v. B.P.J.), justice Samuel Alito pressed Kathleen Hartnett, who represents trans-identifying plaintiff Lindsay Hecox, on what it means &#8220;for equal protection purposes&#8221; to be a boy, girl, man, or woman. The cases ask whether state laws that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing\/\" title=\"...&#039;s &#039;What Is A Wo...?&#039; Question Leaves Leftist Attorney Flailing\">bar trans-identifying males<\/a> from women&#8217;s sports violate the 14th Amendment or Title IX.Hartnett agreed schools may have separate boys&#8217; and girls&#8217; teams and said the court must look to how a law defines sex,but she declined to offer a standalone definition of &#8220;man&#8221; or &#8220;woman&#8221; for equal-protection analysis. When Alito posed a hypothetical about a birth-sex male who identifies as female and has undergone no medical transition, Hartnett said a school could lawfully exclude that student if the statute aims to prevent a biological advantage, while also saying she would respect the person&#8217;s self\u2011identity in address. Alito pressed whether excluding such a person would be discrimination based on transgender status; Hartnett responded that the question would turn on the level of scrutiny applied and how the statute operates in practice.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In a high-profile case before the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Samuel Alito left a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-3\/\" title=\"...&#039;s &#039;What Is A Wo...?&#039; Question Leaves Leftist Attorney Flailing\">left-wing attorney scrambling<\/a> with a series of simple questions about biological sex.<\/p>\n<p>The moment came during <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/program\/public-affairs-event\/justices-hear-case-on-transgender-ban-in-womens-sports\/671043\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">oral arguments<\/a> for <em>Little v. Hecox<\/em>, one of two cases (<em>West Virginia v. B.P.J.<\/em>) heard by the high court on Tuesday that <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/09\/30\/the-federalists-guide-to-the-2025-supreme-court-term\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">center around<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-4\/\" title=\"...&#039;s &#039;What Is A Wo...?&#039; Question Leaves Leftist Attorney Flailing\">state laws protecting women&#038;rsquo<\/a>;s sports from trans-identifying men. The justices will determine whether the statutes violate the 14th Amendment&rsquo;s equal protection clause, or, in West Virginia&rsquo;s case, Title IX. <\/p>\n<p>In his line of questioning, Alito asked Kathleen Hartnett, who represented the trans-identifying male challenging the Idaho law (Lindsay Hecox), about some &ldquo;basics&rdquo; regarding biological sex and rules governing it. He began by probing whether Hartnett believed that &ldquo;a school may have separate teams for a category of students classified as boys and a category of students classified as girls,&rdquo; to which Hartnett answered in the affirmative. <\/p>\n<p>Citing Hartnett&rsquo;s answer, Alito then asked the left-wing attorney, &ldquo;is it not necessary for there to be &mdash; for equal protection purposes, if that is challenged under the equal protection clause &mdash; an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman?&rdquo; Once again, Hartnett said, &ldquo;yes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>While Hartnett seemingly had no trouble answering those questions, the justice&rsquo;s basic follow-up proved to be a real struggle for her. When asked by Alito what it means &mdash; &ldquo;for equal protection purposes&rdquo; &mdash; &ldquo;to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman,&rdquo; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/alitos-what-is-a-woman-question-leaves-leftist-attorney-flailing-2\/\" title=\"...&#039;s &#039;What Is A Wo...?&#039; Question Leaves Leftist Attorney Flailing\">left-wing lawyer flailed<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>After initially expressing confusion about the justice&rsquo;s question, Hartlett subsequently declined to provide a definitive answer. She said that she believes &ldquo;that the underlying enactment, whatever it was &mdash; the policy, the law &mdash; &hellip; we&rsquo;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.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We do not have a definition for the court, and &hellip; we&rsquo;re not disputing the definition here,&rdquo; Hartlett said. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;re saying is that the way it applies in practice is to <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >exclude birth-sex males categorically<\/a> from women&rsquo;s teams and that there&rsquo;s a subset of those birth-sex males where it doesn&rsquo;t make sense to do so according to the state&rsquo;s own interest.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The answer didn&rsquo;t appear convincing to Alito. The Bush appointee further probed Hartlett on how courts are supposed to be able to &ldquo;determine whether there&rsquo;s discrimination on the basis of sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection purposes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Once again, Hartlett struggled to provide a compelling answer. Using a female pronoun to refer to her male client, Hartlett said, &ldquo;We basically know that [Idaho has] identified, pursuant to their own statute, [that] Lindsay qualifies as a birth-sex male, and she&rsquo;s being excluded categorically from the women&rsquo;s teams as the statute.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;So, we&rsquo;re taking the statute&rsquo;s definitions as we find them, and we don&rsquo;t dispute them. We&rsquo;re just trying to figure out do they create an equal protection problem,&rdquo; Hartlett said. <\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Lawyer representing Hecox refuses to define &ldquo;man&rdquo; and &ldquo;woman,&rdquo; leading Justice Alito to ask how courts are supposed to determine if there&rsquo;s been sex-based discrimination without knowing &ldquo;what sex means.&rdquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FDRLST?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@FDRLST<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aIHYnfrqfS\">pic.twitter.com\/aIHYnfrqfS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Shawn Fleetwood (@ShawnFleetwood) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShawnFleetwood\/status\/2011120038493716699?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 13, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Circling back to his school hypothetical, Alito posed a scenario in which the school has a men and women&rsquo;s track team, as well as a &ldquo;student who has the genes and the reproductive system of a male and had those at birth and has never taken puberty blockers, never taken female hormones, never had any gender-altering or -affirming surgery.&rdquo; This student, Alito surmised, then &ldquo;says, &lsquo;Nevertheless, I am a woman, that&rsquo;s who I am.&#8217;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Can the school say, &lsquo;No, you cannot participate on the girls&rsquo; team?&#8217;&rdquo; Alito asked. <\/p>\n<p>Hartlett agreed that the school could ban such a male from competing on the women&rsquo;s team, leading Alito to probe, &ldquo;Is that person not a woman in your understanding?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In her response, Hartlett said that she &ldquo;would respect their self-identity in addressing the person, but in terms of the statute, I think the question is, &lsquo;Does that person have a sex-based biological advantage that&rsquo;s going to make it unfair for that person to be part of the women&rsquo;s team?&#8217;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s the rationale for the regulation. And so that&rsquo;s the that&rsquo;s the way we&rsquo;d be testing that hypothetical,&rdquo; Hartlett added. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The reason I&rsquo;m asking,&rdquo; Alito pressed, &ldquo;has to do with discrimination on the basis of transgender status. So, what you seem to be saying is, &lsquo;Yes, it is permissible for the school to discriminate on the basis of transgender status.&rsquo; Because if this person is a &lsquo;trans woman,&rsquo; a &lsquo;trans girl,&rsquo; and is barred &hellip; from the girls&rsquo; team, then that person is being subjected to differential treatment based on transgender status, right?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Hartlett replied that such a hypothetical would then center around the question of &ldquo;whether scrutiny would be satisfied.&rdquo; She further expressed her team&rsquo;s belief that it would be a &ldquo;transgender classification,&rdquo; which she claimed would be subject to a higher form of scrutiny by courts. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alito challenges lawyer on defining biological sex<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":2535859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Samuel-Alito.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[33417,57468,32275,70842],"class_list":["post-2535858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-gender-identity","tag-justice-alito","tag-supreme-court","tag-what-is-a-woman"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Samuel-Alito.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2535858"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2535862,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535858\/revisions\/2535862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2535859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2535858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2535858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2535858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}