The U.S. Supreme Court May 20 granted emergency relief to Laurel Libby. Who? Laurel Libby is a member of Maine’s House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Pine Tree State’s Legislature, a Republican representing the 90^th district around Auburn. She’s an opponent of gender ideology who got into trouble earlier this year for posting a picture of a high school boy pretending to be a girl who beat out a real girl in a sports competition. Democrats feigned outrage at her “using” a minor (in a public picture) to make a political point. For that “offense,” the Maine House on a straight party line vote (majority Democrats prevailing) censured and censored her, stripping Rep. Libby of the right to vote until she apologized before the chamber.

Rep. Libby refused to engage in the 21^st century trans version of a Chinese Communist struggle session. Instead, she sued the Legislature. The case made its way on an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court which said that Rep. Libby could continue voting while the underlying Constitutional claims were fought out in lower courts. Libby got her vote back.

It seems paradoxical that the party which constantly yelps about “democratic norms” and the dangers of “disenfranchisement” decided to suppress Rep. Libby’s ability to vote on behalf of her district. Had the Supreme Court not intervened, Maine Democrats would have been happy to deny Rep. Libby’s constituents a vote for the rest of the Legislature as the case ground along in lower courts.

Rep. Laurel Libby stood up for the rights of real girls to their own sports and spaces against the gender ideologues. Compare her to Maine’s Democratic Governor, Janet Mills.

Mills has made her own the fight against President Donald Trump’s executive order protecting female sports and spaces. She has said Maine will not comply, even if it has to risk loss of federal funds. Of course, she really doesn’t want that and is suing the President. Mills is a woman who chooses to stand with ersatz “women” who use womanhood as a costume. Libby is a woman who stands with real women and their hard-won achievements, especially in women’s sports, against men who want to compete against women because they “identify” as women and/or know they’d lose against other men. The Democratic Party in Maine and nationally appears to have made the latter one of the hills they want to die on. In my view, rest in peace.

Those are the two women I wanted to focus on. But there’s a third. Who? Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Libby’s case came to the Supreme Court on emergency appeal because she contended that being barred from voting in the Legislature while her case crawled through the lower courts amounted to disenfranchisement of her district. It was an emergency because by denying her the right to vote — potentially for the rest of her term — the 90^th District would be irreparably harmed. On that basis the Court granted relief: without prejudice to the claims Maine Democrats were making about a legislature’s right to discipline its members, claims being adjudicated in lower courts, Libby should be allowed to vote. Allowing it would not cause the Legislature lasting harm, but disallowing it would cause Libby and her district irreparable harm.

Two justices dissented from the grant of relief. Sonia Sotomayor simply listed her disagreement, without further comment. But Ketanji Brown Jackson decided to attach her own dissent, which amounted essentially to saying that the Court’s intervention was premature because taking away Libby’s vote wasn’t really damaging. In theory we don’t know where Brown Jackson might come down on gender ideology issues, though I suspect we do by the fact that a woman chosen by Joe Biden because his criteria included sex and race punted when asked by a woman (Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn) to define woman. Brown Jackson didn’t answer because she said she is not a “biologist.” To my mind, that answer itself should have been enough to disqualify her; a woman who needs to consult a biologist to know who is a woman is clearly either ignorant or hiding an ideological agenda to ascend the Court. But, of course, the latter is likely why Senate Democrats greased the skids for her.

So, while we don’t know (wink, wink, nod, nod) where she might come down on real versus fake women, we clearly know Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t see allowing a woman to vote in a Legislature to which she was duly elected because she did not kowtow to the gender ideologues as a priority.

Somehow I find it hard to imagine that a legislature that censored a legislator advocating communism would have been afforded similar deference by Justices Sotomayor and/or Brown Jackson. My guess is we’d be assured that a legislature could not invoke its disciplinary powers to trump “freedom of speech” (as long as the speech being freed was what the elites liked).

What does this have to do with Catholics? It is clearly an effort, where Democrats enjoy sufficient political insulation, to rule out of court any dissent to the gender ideology juggernaut concerning minors. Even when the dissent comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition that “male and female He created them.” Legislators cannot criticize denying female minors their sports because the criticism implicated another “minor.” Parents in Colorado cannot now be trusted with raising their children apart from state intervention unless they “affirm” gender ideology. Other states allow schools to hide such matters from parents. Colorado parents are suing, claiming that state’s new law abridges their “freedom of speech” vis-a-vis their kids. “Freedom of speech”? It’s about the right of parental primacy in the upbringing of their children, not whether the state thinks parents have adequately exposed the parent’s child to the “marketplace of ideas” about sex.

The lesson I learn from this Maine debate, as I look at Libby, Mills, and Brown Jackson? That maybe not all women are created equal. Especially when I’m told to “believe women!”