Contemporary American law is increasingly committed to a project of sex enforcement. Across statutes, executive orders, and litigation positions, governments define “biological sex” as binary, immutable, and determinable at birth. They then use that static, dimorphic model to regulate people’s access to rights, spaces, and services. This Article argues that this project has a devastating and largely unacknowledged collateral consequence: the rhetorical and practical erasure of intersex Americans. Intersex variations—naturally occurring differences in sex characteristics—demonstrate that sex is not a single binary trait but a multi-factor biological phenomenon that does not reliably sort human bodies into two mutually exclusive categories. Because intersex variation makes binary classification scientifically unstable and administratively unworkable, contemporary sex-binary regimes must treat intersex bodies as anomalies, exceptions, or errors rather than as ordinary human variation.

This Article traces the rhetorical shift that enables this project, showing how “biological sex” has been deployed to cast sex binarism as objective reality rather than ideological belief. It then provides an overview of the biology of sex differentiation, explaining how chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, anatomical, and secondary sex characteristics vary independently across individuals, and demonstrating that intersex variations are neither rare nor anomalous. It shows that no single biological marker—and no combination of markers—can coherently sustain a binary definition of sex. The Article examines how states and the federal government nonetheless codify binary sex through statutory definitions, executive orders, and litigation rhetoric that render intersex people legally unintelligible. The Article maps the consequences of that illegibility across healthcare, identity documents, sex-segregated spaces, education, and athletics. In the healthcare context, this Article examines a core policy conflict: bans on gender-affirming care for minors frequently prohibit medications and procedures for transgender adolescents out of purported concerns about irreversibility and the capacity of transgender youth to consent while expressly permitting surgical and hormonal “normalization” interventions to “treat” or “correct” intersex infants and small children. Finally, the Article argues that these contradictions reveal the deeper function of contemporary anti-trans policy: not the protection of children or medical ethics, but the enforcement of binary sex as a governing legal order. It concludes by assessing the resulting doctrinal landscape and identifying potential strategies—grounded in consent doctrine, equal protection, and related constitutional theories—to challenge binary sex enforcement and to re-center intersex bodily autonomy in disputes over sex classification.

During the runup to the 2024 election, virtually every person who watched an American football game saw an advertisement alleging that Kamala Harris was 'for they/them," while "President Trump is for you." Candidates and interest groups spent more than $200 million on ads shaping and preying on public perception of trans people, and Democrats wasted no time blaming Kamala Harris's electoral loss on messaging around trans issues. On the heels of a contentious election that relied heavily on this type of weaponized culture war messaging, misleading and hostile discourse about transgender people and the issues they face is hard to escape.

Transphobic debates dominate the public sphere, often fueled by cisgender anxious compulsions to categorize others according to heteronormative gender roles. Even the Olympics were marred by a transphobic harassment campaign against a gold medalist who is not in fact transgender. More broadly, concerns about slippery slopes and far-reaching hypotheticals have birthed a moral panic about the ways trans people disrupt the cultural order, and courts have been complicit in reinforcing traditional cisgender norms even when it causes real harm to trans people.

The U.S. legal system uses traditional legal rhetoric as the generally accepted form of logical reasoning, a form of reasoning that relies heavily on
categories and syllogistic reasoning to reinforce heteronormative social roles and hierarchies. Traditional legal rhetoric ratifies hate-motivated marginalization of peoples who defy, transcend, resist, or reject classification according to traditional cisgender norms. For example, restrictions and bans on gender affirming healthcare effectively relegate trans folks to a permanent lower caste by not only denying them essential medical care, but also by signaling that they are unworthy of recognition, support, or dignity, thereby reinforcing their systemic marginalization.

This Article surveys cases from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018, in which immigration law was the central focus of the case. The Survey begins with a discussion of the standard of review the Eleventh Circuit applies to cases decided by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and Immigration Judges (IJs), followed by summaries of cases disposed on procedural or jurisdictional grounds. Then, the Article describes the Eleventh Circuit's recent jurisprudence around issues of discretionary relief from removal, asylum, and habeas corpus law.

This Article surveys cases from the Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals from June 1, 2017 through May 31, 2018, in which principles of administrative law were a central focus of the case. Exhaustion of administrative remedies will be the first topic discussed, followed by review of decisions by administrative agencies, then on to scope of authority, with statutory construction to follow. The Article will conclude with standard of review.