Supreme Court orders Maine legislature to revoke censure of Rep. Laurel Libby over trans athlete post

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Maine state legislature to revoke its censure of GOP state representative Laurel Libby on Tuesday. Libby has been censured since Feb. 15 for a social media post that identified a transgender Maine high school athlete who won a girls' pole vault competition. 

In a 7-2 decision, the court ruled that Libby's entitlement to relief from the censure is "indisputably clear."

The GOP lawmaker celebrated the Supreme Court decision in an X post. 

"This is a victory not just for my constituents, but for the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court has affirmed what should NEVER have been in question - that no state legislature has the power to silence an elected official simply for speaking truthfully about issues that matter," Libby wrote. 

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Meanwhile, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. 

Jackson criticized the grant of emergency relief for Libby, and broader concerns of 'shadow docket' emergency appeals.'

"The watering down of our Court's standards for granting emergency relief is, to me, an unfortunate development," Jackson said. "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."

Ever since her censure was placed in February, Libby has argued that her post did not initially publicize the incident or the figure, since the athlete had already been publicized in other media. 

Libby previously told Fox News Digital that no one from the school or the athlete's family ever reached out to her about the post. 

The first person Libby says she heard from that took issue with her post was Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, who she is now suing for censuring her over the post.

"He found it objectionable and asked me to take it down, at the same time I asked him if he would support Maine girls, and support policy that stopped discrimination against Maine young women in sports and he declined to answer," Libby said. "The main criticism all along from the Democrats is that it was a picture of a minor." 

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Fecteau's office previously provided documents to Fox News Digital confirming the conversation took place. 

"I am asking you to take the post down," Fecteau wrote in a letter to Libby on Feb. 18. "In addition to risking the young person's safety, your post violates one of the long held political traditions of 'leaving kids out of it' - a tradition that has even been observed by political pundits with regard to the treatment of kids who are in the White House, the most scrutinized office in the nation."

Then, after the censure was passed at the state house in February, Fecteau told Libby that the censure would be revoked if she apologized for the social media post. But Libby firmly refused. 

Instead, the state representative filed a lawsuit to have the censure overturned, but was ruled against by Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose, who was appointed by former President Biden in January. DuBose presided over the case after every district judge in Maine refused to take the case. 

Libby then filed an appeal to First Circuit Court of Appeals, but was ruled against there too. So she took her case to the Supreme Court in April. 

The defendants, Fecteau and House Clerk Robert Hunt, represented by Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, defended the decision to censure Libby for the February post in their response to the Supreme Court appeal last week. 

"Like other censures of Maine House members, the censure resolution required Rep. Libby to apologize for her conduct-not recant her views. Rep. Libby has steadfastly refused to comply with this modest punishment, which is designed to restore the integrity and reputation of the body," the response read. 

"Her refusal places her in breach of a centuries-old rule of the Maine House, Rule 401(11), that Rep. Libby previously agreed, along with all of her House colleagues, would govern House proceedings. Rule 401(11) provides that a member found by the body to be in breach of its rules may not participate in floor debates or vote on matters before the full House until they have 'made satisfaction,' i.e., here, apologized for their breach."

Libby had the support of the U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who filed an amicus brief supporting Libby in her lawsuit, and Bondi has personally spoken out in support of the embattled Republican state representative. 

"The Department of Justice is proud to fight for girls in Maine and stand alongside Rep. Libby, who is being attacked simply for defending girls in her home state.  As our lawsuit against the state of Maine illustrates, we will always protect girls' sports and girls' spaces from radical gender ideology," Bondi told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News' Shannon Bream and William Mears contributed to this report.

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