Ketanji Brown Jackson Humiliates Herself Again - Frustrated Attorney Forced to Teach Her About Simple Legal Term in Front of Entire Court

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used Tuesday’s Supreme Court oral arguments to once again remind observers why her confirmation hearings raised so many red flags.

This time, however, the issue wasn’t biology.

It was basic constitutional law.

During arguments in Little v. Hecox — a closely watched case testing Idaho’s authority to bar biological males who identify as transgender from competing in girls’ school sports — Jackson appeared confused about one of the most elementary concepts in judicial review: what it means for a law to be “tailored.”

If there were ever a case poised to expose Jackson’s weaknesses this term, Little v. Hecox was it. The dispute goes directly to whether states retain the sovereign authority to protect female athletes by drawing sex-based distinctions in athletics — an issue that has become a flashpoint in the culture war and a test of how far courts are willing to go in redefining biological reality.

Jackson, of course, is no stranger to viral moments. Her 2022 confirmation hearing produced the now-infamous exchange in which she declined to answer a straightforward question about the definition of a woman — a moment that launched endless memes and even inspired the title of Matt Walsh’s documentary. More recently, she managed to turn heads by invoking the hypothetical perspective of a Martian in a dissent involving nationwide injunctions.

Given that track record, expectations were high that Jackson would deliver another headline-grabbing performance.

She did — just not in the way many anticipated.

The most striking moment of Tuesday’s argument came when Hashim Mooppan, arguing on behalf of the United States as amicus curiae in support of Idaho, explained that the state’s law did not need to be flawless to survive constitutional review.

As Mooppan put it, Idaho’s “law is reasonably tailored, regardless of whether it is perfectly tailored, as applied to any such tiny subset of men. And states are not required to redefine sex or monitor the testosterone levels of female athletes.”

In constitutional terms, “tailoring” refers to how narrowly or broadly a law is crafted in relation to the level of scrutiny applied by the courts. Laws implicating fundamental rights are subjected to strict scrutiny and must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest. Laws reviewed under intermediate scrutiny — the standard at issue here — need only show a reasonable fit between the government’s objective and the means chosen.

That distinction is first-year law school material.

Yet Jackson appeared baffled by it.

As Mooppan and Justice Amy Coney Barrett discussed why intermediate, rather than strict, scrutiny applied — noting there is no constitutional right to participate in school sports — Jackson interjected with visible confusion.

“I guess I’m still struggling to understand why the state would have to have perfectly tailored laws,” Jackson said.

“I would think the state would just have to make exceptions where people can demonstrate that the justification that makes the state’s conduct constitutional doesn’t apply to them,” she added.

Mooppan responded bluntly — and, for a Supreme Court justice, embarrassingly necessarily.

“So making exceptions is tailoring your law,” he explained. “That’s literally what it means, to tailor your law.”

National Review legal analyst Dan McLaughlin didn’t mince words in describing the exchange, calling it a stark display of judicial incompetence.

There were other moments of gender-ideology theater scattered throughout the arguments, but this was the one that lingered. Instead of leaning into her familiar “I’m not a biologist” refrain, Jackson veered into something far more alarming: uncertainty about foundational legal doctrine.

Where critics expected ideological theatrics, they got something worse.

A Supreme Court justice who seemed unclear on the basics of constitutional scrutiny.

It was, in its own way, far more unsettling than funny.