Jacob Posik is director of legislative affairs for the Maine Policy Institute.

The Supreme Court closed its term this week with two of the most consequential decisions in recent memory on birthright citizenship and participation in girls’ sports.

Despite regular hyperbole about the court’s partisanship and the many bad takes on its illegitimacy and need for redesign, the court again affirmed its ideological independence. In both cases, SCOTUS ultimately arrived at the correct conclusion by doing what it is supposed to do: interpret the law, not rewrite it.

The court did not act along ideological lines. In fact, it delivered a major blow to President Trump’s agenda.

Many who identify as right of center, myself included, believe our country should pursue immigration reform and secure its borders. These goals are necessary and overdue. But constitutional interpretation requires honesty, transparency and discipline. Judges cannot simply reach their preferred policy outcomes by ignoring centuries of legal precedent or changing the plain meaning of words. 

In the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, the court exercised necessary judicial restraint. The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has long been understood to grant citizenship to nearly everyone born here. That interpretation has shaped American law for generations and (thankfully) cannot be changed based on the whims of the chief executive.

If Americans believe that citizenship principle should change, the Constitution provides a mechanism: amend it through the democratic process. What the president cannot do is unilaterally redefine constitutional language through executive order. No one should want to live in a world where the chief executive has that kind of power. 

The Court’s responsibility was not to determine what immigration policy ought to be in response to birth tourism. Its job was to determine what the Constitution requires. By rejecting an attempt to narrow birthright citizenship by executive fiat, the justices reaffirmed an essential principle on the separation of powers: the executive branch enforces the law, it does not interpret or amend it.

This kind of restraint feels increasingly rare in an era when every controversial issue is seemingly rushed into federal court. Americans often expect SCOTUS to solve political disagreements that our representatives neglect to resolve. But constitutional government requires courts to stay in their lane, even when doing so frustrates one side or the other (or maybe even both).

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the case upholding state bans on transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports, the Court ruled states can maintain separate athletic competitions for biological males and females. The decision is ultimately rooted in Title IX’s original purpose.

Congress enacted Title IX to create opportunities for women by recognizing the inherent, God-given differences between males and females, and that those differences matter in competitive athletics. Those differences do not disappear because our cultural vocabulary has changed. 

Gender-separated sports exist because male physiology produces measurable advantages over women in speed, strength, endurance, power and other metrics. The court acknowledged as much, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing for the majority that “separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable given the inherent physical differences between the sexes.” 

It’s worth noting that Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all agreed that bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports do not violate Title IX. 

Reasonable people can debate how society should accommodate transgender individuals, but ensuring fairness in athletics is not discrimination. Durable majorities of Americans and Mainers believe this. Protecting competitive opportunities for biological females is a legitimate governmental interest, and states should retain the autonomy to preserve that fairness if they choose. 

Thus, the Court correctly concluded that biological sex remains a constitutionally permissible basis for organizing athletic competition. The ruling protects the same women Title IX was designed to serve.

We often hear from people on both sides that the high court is a partisan institution and needs to be restructured (only when the court’s composition doesn’t favor their tribe). But Mainers should know that 44% of its decisions this term were unanimous. 

Split decisions capture the headlines, but most of the court’s work is uncontroversial and the ideological differences among the justices are not evident.

Court decisions should not be about what side or party wins. Court decisions should be about rendering justice under proper interpretations of the law. When that occurs, all Americans win. 
That’s precisely how the court operated in these two cases. That’s how I know the court is working exactly how it’s supposed to work.