Supreme Court on transgender athlete bans

Given that half the states are allowing it, allowing transgender girls and women to participate, about half are not, why would we, at this point, just the role of this court, jump in and try to constitutionalize a rule for the whole country while there's still, as you say, uncertainty and debate?

And a key issue here will be the scope of the ruling that they ultimately end up releasing. Will this be nationwide? It seemed really unlikely. From listening to the arguments, it seemed more likely this would end up being something that states would be able to decide themselves. So for instance, if the justices determine things that way, these 27 states where they have bans, they may stay in place. The other states could make their own decisions. There also is an opportunity here, though, for the justices to sidestep this very thorny issue altogether. In one of the cases from Idaho, the plaintiff, Lindsay Hecox, actually wants her case dismissed. She said she doesn't want the attention from being part of this case. She wants to finish college, and she's not going to participate in sports in Idaho anymore, in women's sports, that is. So, she says her case is moot. And the Supreme Court is supposed to make a decision about that after the arguments. In the other case out of West Virginia, the plaintiff is also saying that because there's so much uncertainty here, maybe the court should just send it back down to the lower courts for more fact finding. So we don't know for sure if we will really get an ultimate decision here or if this might get sent back down, potentially one of the cases dismissed as well.

And in the meantime, the Supreme Court put out their decision on three separate cases today. What do we know about those rulings? So yes, three different cases. One is Bost versus Illinois State Board of Elections. And this is from Congressman Michael Bost, whether he has the right to sue, known as standing. And this is challenging an Illinois law that allows mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted, even if they arrive as many as 14 days later. What the Supreme Court said here, very simply, is that as a candidate for office, he does have standing because this is a law that affects the counting of votes in his election. So he has a personal stake here. Now, another case that was decided, it's Case versus Montana. This was a Fourth Amendment case. And what happened here is someone's ex-girlfriend had called 911. She was worried that he might commit suicide, that there might be harm that he was going to commit to himself. Police officers came. They tried yelling through an open window. They thought they saw potentially an empty gun holster, something that looked like a suicide note, ended up entering. He came out of a closet. They thought they saw a weapon. They shot. And then ultimately he was actually convicted of assault. But he says that they were supposed to have a warrant to enter his home. Now, what the court held today is that the police had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that he had potentially intended to take his own life and may have shot himself. So he did have the right to enter. They did have the right to enter that home without a warrant. And then the last case is a little bit more legally sticky, but it's Barrett versus United States. It related to the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment. And it was whether someone who committed a single act that violated two parts of a statute could be convicted twice, essentially. And what the court held was that Congress did not authorize convictions under both.

All right. Katrina Kaufman, thank you so much for walking us through all that. Appreciate your time.