Washington – The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that the Maine House of Representatives could not prevent a republican legislator from speaking in the room or voting following comments that she made about a transgender student.
In a brief prescription, the High Court granted an emergency request from the state representative of Maine Laurel Libby, which faced a considerable return from a social media position in February when a transgender girl won a pole jump event in the state championship earlier this year.
The Trump administration offered Libby support, the Ministry of Justice fileing a dissertation before a federal court of appeal. Disputes will now continue to this court.
Two of the liberal judges of the Court, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, did not agree with the result. The court has a conservative majority 6-3.
Libby, critic of state policy to allow transgender athletes to participate in high school sports, published a photo of the child athlete alongside a photo of the same student who participates in the boys’ event the previous year.
The Maine House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, later censored Libby.
The question before the Supreme Court was not censorship, but a separate punishment which prohibited Libby from speaking or voting to the House of Representatives until it has apologized.
Consequently, Libby could not properly represent his voters, leaving them speechless in the Legislative Assembly, argued his lawyers. A group of voters joined Libby in the deposit of prosecution.
They asked the Supreme Court to allow it immediately to participate in the current legislative session, which ends in June, arguing that the sentence violates the voting rights of its voters under the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
The lower courts refused to intervene, saying that his claims have been prohibited by legislative immunity.
Maine Prosecutor General Aaron Frey said in court documents that the actions taken by the House of Representatives constituted a “modest punishment” which simply required excuses, and not for Libby to retract his opinions.
In his dissident opinion, Jackson said that she did not think that Libby had met the high bar required for the Supreme Court to intervene.
Among other things, Libby and his supporters had not shown that there were important votes to come, nor votes where his participation was the key to the result, said Jackson.
Although it is “certainly possible” that Libby will finally prevail over his legal arguments, the result was “not clear, and even less undoubtedly”, she added.
