About This Episode
We’re back with another episode of “Here’s the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition.” This month, NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett is speaking with legal experts and lawyers to discuss the cases being argued this term — and the legal precedents that underpin them. Our second episode is about the transgender student athletes who are challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevent them from competing on girls’ teams in school sports. The courts of appeals in each district have sided with the student athletes, but Supreme Court watchers agree that the justices are likely to uphold the bans. Former ACLU national legal director David Cole argued Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020), in which a 6-3 majority of justices established transgender people as a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination. Host Laura Jarrett talks to Cole about his client Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job after she came out as transgender. He explains how he won over conservative justices on the high court, and why the stakes are different for the transgender athletes in these cases.