譯者 |鄒依佳 中國政法大學本科
一審 |汪晨涵 復旦大學法碩
二審 | 王槐語 UCB LLM
編輯｜周 彤 北京理工大學法學院 LLB
田 悅 華僑大學本科
責編 | 劉一賢 國際關係學院本科
The University of Chicago Law Review Volume 92.1, Number 1 | January 2025
《芝加哥大學法律評論》第92.1卷第1期
Scrutinizing Sex
性別的加強審查
Jessica A. Clarke
ABSTRACT
摘要
Critics of the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence despair that the Court conceives of discrimination as the mere classification of individuals on forbidden grounds, such as race and sex, rather than systemic patterns of subordination. On the Court’s anticlassification theory, affirmative action, which relies on overt racial or gender classifications, is generally forbidden. Anticlassification rules are insensitive to context: a classification is a classification, no matter how well-intentioned it might be, no matter what effects it might have, and no matter if it treats members of various groups in ways that are substantively equal. Whether a classification might be justified due to its purposes, effects, or substance is a separate inquiry demanding careful judicial scrutiny.
最高法院平等保護判例的批評者感到絕望：最高法院僅將歧視理解為基於種族和性別等禁止理由對個人的分類，而不是系統性的從屬關係模式。根據法院的反區分理論，基於公開的種族或性別分類的平權行動通常是被禁止的。反種族區分規則並不與背景過於相關：區分就是區分，無論其用意多麼高尚，無論其可能產生何種影響，也無論其對待不同群體成員是否實質上平等。至於分類的目的、效果或實質是否合理，則是另一個需要仔細司法審查的問題。
Such context-insensitive anticlassification rules could, in principle, extend to individuals who are members of groups often regarded with hostility and suspicion, such as transgender people. Indeed, this is how most trial courts have approached recent laws that classify individuals based on sex to exclude transgender people — concluding that those laws trigger heightened scrutiny and asking whether they serve important governmental interests. However, in a series of recent sex discrimination cases involving transgender plaintiffs, appellate courts have refused to take anticlassification rules seriously. For these judges, a classification is not a classification if it appears, by their own dim normative lights, to treat the sexes equally. These courts give a free pass to sex classifications that target transgender people, declining to ask what important interests these laws might serve.
原則上，這種對背景不敏感的反區分可以適用於經常被敵視和懷疑的群體成員，如變性人。事實上，對近期以性別分類以將跨性別者排除在外的法律，大多數初審法院都是這樣處理的——得出的結論是，這些法律會引發更嚴格的審查，被質詢是否服務於重要的政府利益。然而，在最近一系列涉及變性原告的性別歧視案件中，上訴法院拒絕認真對待反區分規則。對於這些法官，如果某種分類似乎是平等對待性別的，根據他們不明晰的規範，這就不足以稱作一種分類。這些法院對針對變性人的性別分類放任自流，拒絕質詢這些法律可能符合哪些重要利益。
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This Article argues that all sex classifications, like all race-based ones, ought to trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny. It draws support from the principles undergirding anticlassification rules announced by the Roberts Court, most recently in its university affirmative-action decisions. Rather than being empty formalism, as critics contend, anticlassification theory is based in principles related to individual autonomy. These principles provide no basis for defining what counts as a classification differently in the context of sex as opposed to race, nor do they support exceptions to equal protection for transgender people.
本文認為，所有性別分類，像所有基於種族的分類一樣，都應受更嚴格的憲法審查。本文從羅伯茨法院最近一次大學平權運動判決中宣佈的反分類規則的基本原則中汲取支援。反分類理論並非如批評者所言是空洞的形式主義，而是基於個人自主性原則。這些原則並未提供依據，以在性別與種族的背景下對分類作出不同定義，也未支援針對跨性別者在平等保護上的例外。
INTRODUCTION
引言
In its 2023 opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), the Supreme Court reiterated its view that “racial classifications, however compelling their goals,” are “dangerous” and therefore, the use of any such classifications requires strict scrutiny from federal courts. The Supreme Court has also said that “all gender-based classifications” are subject to their own form of “heightened scrutiny.” Accordingly, most trial courts have applied heightened scrutiny to laws that use sex classifications to exclude or target transgender people, asking whether those classifications are substantially related to important governmental interests.
在2023年學生公平入學公司訴哈佛大學校長和研究員案中，最高法院重申了其觀點，即“種族分類，無論其目標多麼令人信服”，都是“危險的”，因此，對此類分類的任何使用都需要聯邦法院的嚴格審查。最高法院還表示，“所有基於性別的分類”都要接受自成一派的“加強審查”。因此，大多數初審法院都對以性別分類排除或針對變性人的法律進行加強審查，詢問這些分類是否與重要的政府利益密切相關。
But in a recent transgender rights case, L.W. ex rel. Williams v. Skrmetti, the Sixth Circuit held that unlike racial classifications, not all sex classifications trigger heightened scrutiny. Rather, it reasoned that sex classifications do not trigger any special scrutiny unless they offend some deeper antidiscrimination principle. It also asserted that sex classifications should not concern courts when they “treat similarly situated individuals evenhandedly” based on “biological” differences. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Skrmetti to consider whether Tennessee’s ban on certain forms of health care for transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause. Twenty-four states have passed similar laws.
但在最近的一宗跨性別權利案L.W. Williams訴Skrmetti中，第六巡迴法院認為，與種族分類不同，並非所有性別分類都會引發更嚴格的審查。相反，法院認定，除非性別分類違反了某些更深層次的反歧視原則，否則不會引發任何特殊審查。它還聲稱，當法院基於“生物”差異“公平對待處境相似的個人”時，不應考慮性別分類。最高法院在Skrmetti案中批准了調卷，以審查田納西州禁止為變性未成年人提供某些形式的醫療保健是否違反了平等保護條款。已有24個州通過了類似的法律。
These laws, which I will refer to as Transgender Health Care Bans (THCBs), prohibit transgender minors from accessing healthcare treatments that are permitted for nontransgender minors. Although sometimes referred to as “gender affirming health care bans,” THCBs are not blanket bans on medications or surgeries that affirm a minor’s gender identity. Rather, THCBs prohibit transgender minors from accessing treatments that are permitted to affirm the gender identities of nontransgender minors. Thus, these laws allow doctors to prescribe testosterone to a boy to affirm his gender identity, so long as that boy was assigned male at birth. But they bar a doctor from prescribing testosterone to a boy who was assigned female at birth, in other words, to a transgender boy.
這些法律在此稱為跨性別醫療禁令（THCBs），禁止跨性別未成年人獲得允許非跨性別未成年允許的醫療服務。儘管有時被稱為“性別肯定的醫療保健禁令”，但THCB並非全面禁止確認未成年人性別認同的藥物或手術。因此，這些法律允許醫生給男孩開睪酮來確認他的性別身份，只要這個男孩出生時被指定為男性。但他們禁止醫生給出生時被指定為女性的男孩開睪酮處方，換言之給變性男孩開睪酮。
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The argument that there is something different about sex classifications that justifies exemptions from heightened scrutiny is a threat not just to LGBTQ rights, but to the broader corpus of sex discrimination law that is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy. Biology is the quintessential justification for sex discrimination; to immunize classifications based on biology from heightened judicial scrutiny would be to neuter the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee of gender equality. This Article argues that all sex classifications, like all race-based ones, ought to trigger heightened scrutiny, regardless of the purposes or effects of those classifications, and notwithstanding arguments about whether the sexes are similarly situated or if sex is somehow a cause of differential treatment. I draw support for this argument from the Supreme Court’s anticlassification principle — the idea that some types of official classifications require judicial over sight — an idea the Court takes seriously in contexts including race, religion, free speech, and, as this Article will argue, sex, notwithstanding the Sixth Circuit’s assertion to the contrary. In transgender rights cases, courts are struggling to apply and understand the anticlassification principle with little guidance from civil rights scholars, who have long focused on critique of that principle and declined to theorize it or explain its role in doctrine. Jurists, left to puzzle about anticlassification rules and how far they might extend, are now circumscribing sex discrimination law, with implications beyond transgender rights.
有人認為，性別分類有其特殊性，因此可以免於嚴格審查，這種觀點不僅威脅到LGBTQ的權利，也威脅到金斯伯格大法官的法律遺產：更廣泛的性別歧視法律體系。生物學是性別歧視的典型理由；使之免受更嚴格的司法審查會讓平等保護條款對性別平等的保障失效。本文認為，所有性別分類和所有種族分類，都應受到更嚴格的審查，無論分類的目的或效果如何，也無論性別是否處境相同或遭到差別待遇。我從最高法院的反分類原則中獲得我的論點支撐，即某些官方的分類需要司法監督，儘管第六巡迴法院的主張與此相反，但法院在種族、宗教、言論自由以及本文將論述的性別等背景下都會認真對待這一觀點。在跨性別權利案件中，法院正在努力應用和理解反分類原則，而民權學者卻鮮有提供指導，他們長期以來一直專注於對該原則的批判，而拒絕將其理論化或解釋其在跨性別案件中的作用。法學家們對反分類規則及其可能延伸的範圍感到困惑，現在他們正在限制性別歧視法，其影響超出了跨性別者的權利。
In the context of race discrimination, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that so long as decision-makers use racial classifications, the law is subject to the standard of strict scrutiny. Purposes are irrelevant. Effects are irrelevant. Whether any sort of purpose or effect might constitute a “governmental interest[ ]” that would justify a racial classification is a separate inquiry that requires careful examination by courts. This separate inquiry occurs on the back end of the analysis, independent of the thresh old question of whether strict scrutiny has been triggered. These rules for race discrimination cases did not develop in a doctrinal vacuum; rather, they were informed, at every step, by parallel decisions with respect to sex discrimination. Thus, the Court has held that, if a law “differentiates on the basis of gender,” “heightened scrutiny” is triggered. To be sure, there are differences in the back end of the analysis that apply to racial and gender classifications. The Supreme Court has held that, while strict scrutiny for racial classifications requires a “compelling” govern mental interest, heightened scrutiny for gender classifications requires only an “important” one. And while racial classifications must be “necessary” to achieve governmental objectives, gender classifications must be only “substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.” But, as a matter of doctrine, there are no differences between the definition of a “classification” that would trigger special scrutiny in the race and gender contexts. Neither is there any principled reason to invent any.
在種族歧視問題上，最高法院多次判定，只要決策者使用種族分類，法律就必須遵守嚴格審查的標準。目的無關緊要。效果無關緊要。任何目的或效果是否可能構成“政府利益”，從而證明種族分類是合理的，這是一個單獨的問題，需要法院仔細研究。這種調查發生在分析後段，獨立於是否觸發了嚴格審查的門檻問題。這些關於種族歧視案件的規則不是在理論真空中制定的；相反，它們在每一步都參考了關於性別歧視的平行判決。因此，法院認為，如果一項法律“基於性別進行區分”，就會觸發“加強審查”。可以肯定的是，適用於種族和性別分類的分析是不同的。最高法院認為，雖然嚴格審查種族分類需要“令人信服”的政府利益，但對性別分類的加強審查只需要一個“重要”的利益。雖然種族分類對於實現政府目標必須是“不可或缺的”，但性別分類只須“與實現這些目標實質上相關”。但理論上，在種族和性別背景下引發特別審查的“分類”定義之間沒有區別。也沒有任何原則性的理由去發明任何區別。
This Article contributes to antidiscrimination theory and doctrine by outlining the features of anticlassification rules and ex plicating the principles that underlie them. Scholars have criticized “classifications” as undefined and anticlassification theory as perverse “fetishization of the facial classification.” A “chorus of academic critics” has condemned the Court’s anticlassification jurisprudence for its “‘individualistic’ premises,” arguing that equal protection law should instead be concerned with group-based subordination. On this view, the Court’s decision in SFFA is a dead end for racial and gender justice. This Article argues, by contrast, that failing to take the Roberts Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence seriously on its own terms poses grave risks for gender equality.
本文概述反分類規則的特點與所依據的原則，為反歧視理論和學說做出貢獻。學者們批評“分類”是不明確的，反分類理論是反常的“對錶面分類的迷信”。一批“學術評論家”譴責法院的反分類判例是導致“個人主義”，認為平等保護法應關注基於群體的從屬關係。根據這一觀點，法院在SFFA案中的裁決是種族和性別正義的死衚衕。相比之下，本文認為，如果不認真對待羅伯茨法院的平權行動判例，性別平等將面臨嚴重風險。
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A close examination of anticlassification doctrine reveals that laws that classify based on sex to the detriment of transgender people should be subject to heightened scrutiny. While there may be gray areas at the peripheries of the distinction between a classification and a facially neutral rule, the core features of these concepts are not hard to discern. It is only by setting aside anticlassification rules that courts create supposed puzzles. For example, the Sixth Circuit could not understand how THCBs could be a form of sex discrimination, while bans on abortion, which apply only to women, are not. Elaboration of what anticlassification rules require causes this puzzle to dissolve. The Supreme Court has held that classifications based on pregnancy do not equate to sex classifications. Therefore, a law forbidding abortion does not classify based on sex; it forbids a medical procedure that can be defined without categorizing the patient by sex. But a law forbidding only transgender people from accessing certain forms of health care inevitably classifies based on sex. To determine who is and is not transgender, these laws must and do turn on the sex of the patient.
研究反分類原則發現，以性別分類損害跨性別者利益的法律應受到更嚴格的審查。雖然分類和表面中立規則之間可能存在灰色地帶，但其概念的核心特徵並不難辨別。只有拋開反分類規則，法院才會面對難題。例如，第六巡迴法院無法理解為什麼THCB會是一種性別歧視，而只適用於女性的墮胎禁令卻不是。對反分類規則的詳細闡釋使這一難題迎刃而解。最高法院認為，基於懷孕的分類並不等同於性別分類。因此，禁止墮胎的法律基於的並非性別分類，而是某種無需性別的醫療程式。但是，禁止跨性別者獲得某些醫療服務的法律不可避免地會基於性別分類。為了確定誰是跨性別者，這些法律應當且必須以患者的性別作為依據。
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With respect to anticlassification theory, a rule requiring that all classifications trigger heightened scrutiny is not merely fetishistic formalism. Rather, the Roberts Court’s opinions reflect two related principles: first, that treating people as no more than members of their race is stereotyping that is offensive to individual autonomy and dignity, and second, that decision-making based on racial classifications detracts from the goal of fair distribution of resources based on individual responsibility. Prominent commentators have criticized the Court’s affirmative-action juris prudence as reflecting no more than majority-group grievances. This Article, by contrast, takes the Supreme Court at its word when it explains the principles animating its anticlassification jurisprudence and asks where those principles lead. It argues these principles demand particular scrutiny of rules that restrict an individual’s access to goods and services based on what public officials think is normal or appropriate for their sex.
反分類理論要求所有分類都引發嚴格審查的規則不僅僅是拜物教形式主義。相反，羅伯茨法院的意見反映了兩個相關的原則： 第一，僅僅將人視為同種族的成員是對個人自主權和尊嚴的刻板印象，第二，基於種族分類的決策有損基於個人責任的公平分配資源的目標。著名評論家批評法院的平權行動僅僅反映多數群體的不滿。相反，本文引用最高法院原文解釋最高法院反分類判例的基本原則，並詢問這些原則應當指向何方。本文認為，這些原則要求對那些基於公職人員對性別的刻板印象而限制個人獲取商品和服務的規則進行特別審查。
In recognizing that anticlassification principles are the guiding lights of the Roberts Court, I do not go so far as to argue they ought to be the guiding lights of an ideal antidiscrimination juris prudence. But I note that while the principle that resources should be allocated based on individual responsibility may be closely associated with conservative causes, the prohibition on stereotyping has broad appeal. This Article attempts a sympathetic reconstruction of anticlassification theory in the hopes of revealing grounds on which equal protection decisions might ac cord with widely shared values.
本文承認反分類原則是羅伯茨法院的指導原則，但同時我並沒有說它們應該成為理想的反歧視法律理論的指導原則。但我注意到，責任越大資源更多，這一原則雖然看似十分保守主義，但應試圖規避刻板印象。本文試圖對反分類理論進行同情性重構，希望揭示出平等保護判決可能與廣泛認同的價值觀相一致的理由。
While scholars have identified the values at work in the Supreme Court’s modern equal protection doctrine, they have not connected them with the problem of classification, which presents a strong argument for judicial review. This Article explains why classifications, among other forms of discrimination, are uniquely problematic and amenable to judicial review. Because they are facial — in the text — classifications present particular risks of harm in how they ask individuals and the polity to think about group-based identities. Additionally, that a legislature has chosen to achieve its aims with classifications signals a possible dysfunction in the political process calling for judicial supervision.
雖然學者們已經確定了最高法院現代平等保護原則中的價值觀，但他們並沒有將其與分類問題聯絡起來，分類問題為司法審查提供了強有力的論據。雖然學者們已經確定了最高法院平等保護原則中的價值觀，但他們並沒有將這些價值觀與強有力支援司法審查的分類問題聯絡起來。本文解釋了為什麼相比於其他形式的歧視，分類顯得獨特，且可以進行司法審查。因為分類從表觀上——書面上——在要求個人和政體如何思考基於群體的身份方面存在特殊的風險。此外，立法機構選擇透過分類來實現其目的，這表明政治可能存在功能失調，需要司法監督。
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To be sure, transgender rights are politicized. Judges with ideological reasons for upholding laws that target transgender people will find grounds for doing so, even if they acknowledge that those laws classify on the basis of sex and therefore trigger heightened scrutiny. But broad definitions of classifications, in the gender context, are likely to lead to more accountable, trans parent, and legitimate judicial decision-making. When courts wrestle with which sex classifications do and do not trigger heightened scrutiny, their decisions devolve into empty formalistic reasoning that obscures the political and practical stakes of antidiscrimination controversies. But when judges accept that all sex classifications trigger heightened scrutiny and decide cases on the back end of that standard, they engage in substantive inquiries that give careful and transparent scrutiny to legislative means and ends.
可以肯定的是，跨性別者權利被政治化了。法官們出於意識形態，會支援針對跨性別者的法律，即使他們承認這些法律基於性別進行分類，因此會引發更嚴格的審查，他們也能找到這樣做的理由。但是，在性別背景下，寬泛的分類定義更可能帶來包含更多責任，容納更有利於跨性別者、更合乎法的司法決策。當法院糾結於哪些性別分類需要觸發高度審查時，他們的判決就會淪為空洞的形式主義推理，從而掩蓋了反歧視的政治和現實利害關係。但是，當法官承認所有的性別分類都會引發高度審查，並根據該標準的後端裁決案件時，他們就會從實質入手，對立法手段和目的進行謹慎而透明的審查。
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Another contribution of this Article is to explain why there is no principled basis for any distinction between race and sex when it comes to what a classification is. In Skrmetti, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that, unlike race-based distinctions, sex classifications are suspect only if they are first found to “perpetuate[ ] invidious stereotypes or unfairly allocate[ ] benefits and burdens.” On this view, courts should give no special scrutiny to supposedly “benign” sex classifications. This Article collects and refutes potential arguments for treating the trigger for special equal protection scrutiny for sex and race differently, such as the arguments that sex is exceptional because it is biological. To be sure, many people today understand sex to be a biological phenomenon, while biological understandings of race have fallen out of favor. But even if biology explains sex or race to some extent, that does not mean it justifies sex or racial classifications. The very purpose of heightened scrutiny is to determine whether a classification is in fact justified by biological differences or otherwise, an inquiry that takes place on back-end review. Another argument is that sex classifications, unlike racial ones, remain ubiquitous in public life, and heightened scrutiny would entail tedious judicial review of banal and inoffensive rules. This objection misunderstands the nature of classifications, overstates the number of sex classifications remaining in public life, and understates the extent to which many classifications ought to be reconsidered.
本文的另一個貢獻是解釋為什麼種族和性別的區分沒有原則性依據。在Skrmetti案中，第六巡迴法院認為，與種族分類不同，只有被發現“延續令人反感的刻板印象或不公平地分配利益和負擔”時，性別分類才值得懷疑。根據這種觀點，法院不應對所謂“良性”的性別分類進行特別審查。本文整理並駁斥了將性別和種族的特殊平等保護審查觸發點區別對待的潛在論點，性別因其生物性而特殊。可以肯定的是，今天很多人都認為性別是一種生物現象，但種族不再是。但是，生物學即使在某種程度上解釋了性別或種族，也並不意味著就可以性別或種族分類的合理性。加強審查的根本目的是，確定一種分類是否確實因生物差異或其他原因而合理，這種調查是在後端審查中進行的。另一個論點是，不同於種族分類，性別分類在社會中仍無處不在，加強審查將會對平平無奇的法律規則進行冗長的司法審查。這種反對意見誤解了分類，誇大了現在仍然存在的性別分類的數目，更低估了許多分類需要重新考慮的程度。
The potential abdication of judicial review of sex classifications has tremendous stakes. As a result of an unprecedented wave of legislation attempting to curtail transgender rights, lower federal courts have been grappling with how to apply constitutional sex discrimination law. While trial courts have generally applied anticlassification rules in straightforward ways, holding that heightened scrutiny is required, as cases climb up the appellate hierarchy, decisions become less fact bound and more polarized. While Skrmetti offers the most thorough articulation of the argument against heightened scrutiny for all sex classifications, it is not an isolated decision. In addition to THCBs, another controversy is whether schools may exclude transgender children from restrooms consistent with their gender identities. On this issue, the Eleventh Circuit has muddled the classification question, scrutinizing only whether school districts may segregate restrooms based on sex, rather than whether they may define sex so as to exclude transgender children. The Sixth and Tenth Circuits have recently disagreed on whether heightened scrutiny applies to laws disallowing transgender people from changing the sex designations on their birth certificates. More such controversies are sure to follow. Yet legal scholarship addressing the equal protection questions now before the Supreme Court is scant.
放棄對性別分類的司法審查可能關係重大。由於立法浪潮前所未有地試圖限制跨性別者的權利，下級聯邦法院一直在致力於解決如何適用憲法性別歧視法的問題。雖然初審法院通常直截了當地適用反分類規則，認為需要加強審查，但隨著案件逐級上訴，判決變得不那麼受事實約束，更加兩極分化。雖然Skrmetti案最徹底地在論點中反對了所有對性別分類的強化審查，但它並不是一個孤立的判決。除THCB外，另一個爭議是學校是否可以禁止跨性別兒童進入與其性別認同一致的衛生間。在這個問題上，第十一巡迴法院混淆了分類問題，只審查了學區是否可以根據性別隔離洗手間，而沒有審查學區是否可以對性別進行定義，從而將跨性別兒童排除在外。針對禁止跨性別者更改出生證明上性別的法律，第六巡迴法院和第十巡迴法院近期就其是否適用高度審查產生了分歧。類似的爭議只會越來越多。然而，目前最高法院擁有的的關於平等保護問題的法律研究還很少。
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It is no exaggeration to say that these transgender rights controversies are “life-or-death” questions that deserve sustained attention. But sex discrimination law has implications beyond the LGBTQ community—many of the landmark 1970s sex discrimination cases challenged sex classifications that worked to the detriment of men who defied traditional gender roles in marriage by engaging in caregiving. The idea that sex classifications are immune from judicial review if they assign men and women to supposedly separate-but-equal spheres, so long as those distinctions are ostensibly justified by biology, is a throwback to a time many thought bygone. Such a rule would revive old doctrines giving a free pass to laws imposing heavier burdens on fathers than mothers to prove parental rights, programs that extend benefits to expectant mothers but not expectant fathers, and criminal laws that penalize female, but not male, toplessness, among other sex classifications still found in statute books. These rules should not be immune from heightened judicial scrutiny simply because lawmakers might think they reflect biology.
毫不誇張地說，這些跨性別者的權利爭議是“生死攸關”的問題，值得持續關注。但性別歧視法的影響不僅限於LGBTQ群體——20世紀70年代許多性別歧視的里程碑案件都是對性別分類的挑戰，因為這些分類不利於那些在婚姻中違背傳統性別角色的顧家男性。如果性別分類將男性和女性分配得各自獨立但平等，只要這些區分表面上是以生物學為依據，就可以免於司法審查，這種觀點是一種向很多人認為已成為遙遠過去之時代的倒車。這樣的規則將讓舊有原則死灰復燃，為某些法律提供豁免，例如：對父親比母親施加更重負擔以證明父母權利的法律，向準母親而非準父親提供福利的專案，以及對女性而非男性裸露上身進行懲罰的刑法，以及其它能在法規叢中翻出的性別分類。這些規則不應僅因立法者認為它們基於生物學而免受更嚴格的司法審查。
This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I contributes to doctrinal debates by untangling the various strands of equal protection case law to reveal that there are no exceptions to the rule that all sex classifications require heightened scrutiny. It also explains why heightened scrutiny is vitally important to legal challenges to policies that discriminate based on sex, including those implicated in transgender rights controversies. Part II explains the theory behind the rule that all classifications trigger heightened scrutiny, as elaborated by the Roberts Court, most notably in its SFFA decision, building on past precedents on both race and sex. Part III identifies and refutes arguments against applying broad anticlassification rules in the sex discrimination context, including that sex, unlike race, is based in biology; that sex classifications are too ubiquitous for heightened judicial scrutiny to be sensible; that history and tradition provide reasons for courts to be less suspicious of sex classifications; and that sex classifications ought not be suspect when they affect transgender people, who are asserting novel challenges to the definition of sex and novel claims to group-based recognition. None of these arguments are reasons courts should not apply heightened scrutiny to all sex classifications.
本文分為三部分：第一部分透過梳理平等保護判例法，揭示所有性別分類都需要加強審查，奠定理論基礎。它還解釋了為什麼加強審查對於反性別歧視政策至關重要，包括那些涉及跨性別者權利爭議的政策。第二部分解釋了羅伯茨法院在有關種族和性別歧視的先例、尤其是在其SFFA判決中闡述的所有分類都應引發高度審查背後的原因。第三部分指出並駁斥了反對在性別歧視中適用廣泛的反分類規則的論點，性別是基於生物學的，而種族不是。性別分類太普遍了，加強司法審查是不明智的；歷史和傳統為法院減少對性別分類的懷疑提供理由；當性別分類影響跨性別者時，不應對其產生懷疑，因為跨性別者對性別的定義提出了新挑戰，並對基於群體的認可提出了新的訴求。這些論點都不是法院不對所有性別分類進行加強審查的理由。
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CONCLUSION
結論
This Article aims to intervene in an urgent debate about equal protection doctrine, with tremendous stakes not just for transgender children and their families, but also for LGBTQ people more broadly, and for the rights of all people to define their own lives free from the enforcement of sex-based expectations by the state. It argues that, under the Roberts Court’s equal protection doctrine, all sex classifications require heightened scrutiny. There is no difference between race and sex in terms of what sorts of classifications trigger heightened scrutiny — all of them do. This broad anticlassification rule is supported by the principle that the Equal Protection Clause protects a right against racial and sex classification in favor of individual respect, dignity, and autonomy. The Court’s jurisprudence gives no reason to deny that right to transgender people. And it gives no reason to revive the deference to legislatures and educational institutions it has denied with respect to affirmative action.
本文旨在介入一場關於平等保護原則的緊急辯論，這場辯論不僅關係到跨性別兒童及其家庭，也關係到更廣泛的LGBTQ群體，關係到所有人定義自己生活的權利，而不受國家對性別期望的影響。本文認為，根據羅伯茨法院的平等保護原則，所有分類都需要加強審查。就何種分類會引發更嚴格的審查而言，種族和性別並無區別——所有分類都會引發。這一廣泛的反分類規則得到了平等保護條款保護反對種族和性別分類的權利，以維護個人尊重、尊嚴和自主權原則。法院沒有理由剝奪跨性別人的這項權利，更沒有理由否認平權行動後，再次恢復對立法機構和教育機構的尊重。
The argument advanced in this Article may strike civil rights scholars as hollow. Since the 1980s, progressive scholars have criticized legal analogies between race and sex as “crabbed, cooptable, and constraining.” Anticlassification, it is said, has proven deficient to address the challenges of racial injustice and structural inequality, and, translated over to gender, it fails to achieve meaningful substantive change. It has been stripped of any means to ensure reproductive justice, it lacks a vision of women and LGBTQ people as full and equal citizens, and it cannot account for the intersections of systems of marginalization that compound to the detriment of our society’s worst off.
本文論點可能會讓人權學者感到空洞。自20世紀80年代以來，進步派學者一直批評種族與性別之間的法律類比“狹隘、可被利用且具有約束性”。據說，反分類已被證明不足以應對種族不公正和結構性不平等，而轉換到性別問題上，也無法有實質性改變。它被剝奪了確保生殖公平的任何手段，缺乏將婦女和男女同性戀、雙性戀、變性者和跨性別者視為完全平等的公民的願景，也無法解釋邊緣化體系的交叉問題，而正是這些問題的複雜性損害了社會中最弱勢的群體。
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Whatever the limits of anticlassification arguments as a long-term social movement strategy, in the short term, civil rights scholars cannot allow the novel premise that some sex classifications are immune from heightened scrutiny to go unchallenged. This Article endeavors to intervene in an urgent doctrinal debate to avoid backsliding on the landmark achievements of constitutional sex discrimination law, limited though they may be.
無論反分類論證作為一種長期的社會運動策略的侷限性幾何，在短期內，人權學者必然質疑某些性別分類免於強化審查的新前提。本文試圖介入一場緊迫的理論辯論，以避免在憲法性別歧視的里程碑式成就上出現倒退，即使這些成就可能有限。
Critics may contend that the doctrinal “innovation[s]” of the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action jurisprudence were made to center “white people’s feelings of aggrievement” and cannot be harnessed for purposes such as transgender rights. I am hopeful that this proves to be untrue, and that in cases on transgender rights, the Court will not limit its anticlassification principles to only those contexts in which they benefit majority-group members. But I acknowledge the possibilities that politics and ideology predetermine the outcomes of legal disputes over affirmative action and transgender rights, and that this Article’s constitutional arguments are tilting at windmills. If so, then I hope to expose this dynamic, adding to the extensive body of scholarly criticism of the Court’s anticlassification theory, and supporting calls for reform of he judiciary and political mobilization for broader visions of gender and racial justice.
批評者可能會說，最高法院平權法案判例的理論“創新”是為了撫平“白人所受的創傷”，不能用於跨性別權利等。本文希望並非如此，在跨性別權利案件中，法院不會將反分類原則僅限於那些有利於多數群體成員的情況。本文承認，政治和意識形態有可能預先決定平權行動和跨性別權利法律糾紛的結果，而本文的憲法論證也有可能是捕風捉影。如果是這樣，那麼本文希望能揭露這一動態，增加對法院反分類理論的廣泛學術批評，並支援司法改革和政治動員的呼籲，以實現更廣泛的性別和種族正義願景。
原文連結：https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/scrutinizing-sex