Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday restored for now a Maine state lawmaker’s right to vote in the state House of Representatives after she was punished for a social media post that identified a transgender student athlete.
The high court granted the request for emergency relief sought by Laurel Libby, who represents House District 90 and was censured by her colleagues for a social media post that criticized the state for allowing transgender athletes at public high schools to compete in girls sports. The online posting from Libby called out a transgender athlete who competed in the state’s track-and-field championship.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from Supreme Court’s decision to grant an injunction.
Libby shared the post that sparked her punishment to Facebook in February and included photos and the name of the athlete, who placed first in the girls’ pole vault. Maine allows transgender students to participate in athletics in accordance with their gender identity. The Justice Department has sued the state’s Department of Education over its policy, which the Trump administration says discriminates against women in violation of Title IX. The suit came after President Trump signed an executive order in February barring transgender girls and women from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
In response to Libby’s social media post, the Maine House voted to censure her. The resolution stated that Libby refused to remove her post after she was warned it might endanger the athlete and said “it is a basic tenet of politics and good moral character that children should not be targeted by adult politicians, especially when that targeting could result in serious harm.”
The censure measure directed Libby to “accept full responsibility for the incident and publicly apologize to the House and to the people of the state of Maine.” Libby, it concluded, “must comport herself in a manner that pursues the highest standards of legislative conduct.
After the resolution was approved by the state House, Libby was brought to the well of the chamber and instructed to apologize. When she refused to do so, the House speaker found her in violation of a centuries-old Maine House rule that bars a member who is in breach of the body’s rules from participating in debates or voting on matters before it until the member has “made satisfaction.”
Libby and six of her constituents sued in federal court to have her right to vote in the Maine House restored. A federal district court declined to provide them with preliminary relief, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected a request to intervene.
In seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court, Libby said her constituents do not have equal representation in the chamber. The punishment leaves them “without a voice or vote for every bill coming to the House floor for the rest of [Libby’s] elected term.” Libby was first elected to the state legislature in 2020, and her current term runs through 2026.
But Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey argued that Libby is seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention in an “intra-parliamentary dispute” that, if granted, would pierce legislative immunity for core legislative acts.
“The power of a legislative body to punish its members has been recognized in the common law since ancient times and has been enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions, including Maine’s, since the birth of our republic,” he wrote. “Likewise, the act of tallying a floor vote to determine whether a measure succeeds or fails is an integral act in the legislative process. An injunction directing how such processes may unfold would be contrary to the policy of insulating legislative activity from ‘outside interference’ that undergirds this court’s immunity jurisprudence.”
Writing in dissent, Jackson criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to grant Libby emergency relief at this stage in the proceedings and said it has in recent years been too quick to intervene.
“The watering down of our court’s standards for granting emergency relief is, to me, an unfortunate development,” Jackson wrote, adding that the manner in which the Supreme Court handles emergency appeals — quickly without full briefing and holding oral argument — is “hardly a model for sound decisionmaking.”
She continued: “At the very least, by lowering the bar for granting emergency relief, the Court itself will bear responsibility for the resulting systemic disruption, as a surge in requests for our ‘extraordinary’ intervention — at earlier and earlier stages of ongoing lower court proceedings, and with greater and greater frequency — will undoubtedly follow.”
