The Supreme Court has been asked to decide a case that combines two of the most charged issues in the US at the moment: trans participation in sports, and attacks on voting rights.

The case’s inciting incident came in February, when Laurel Libby, a Republican elected to the Maine House of Representatives, wrote a Facebook post criticizing a transgender athlete who won a statewide pole vaulting championship. In that post, Libby did not blur or otherwise obscure the high school student’s face, and she named the student and her school.

In response, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat, asked Libby to remove the post due to concerns “that publicizing the student’s identity would threaten the student’s health and safety.” When Libby refused, a majority of the state house passed a resolution censuring Libby — that resolution reiterated Fecteau’s concern that shining such a spotlight on a high school student “may endanger the minor.” It also highlighted a study showing that “transgender people are over four times more likely to be victims of violence.”

Thus far, all of this is fine as a constitutional matter. While Libby has a First Amendment right to speak out against trans rights, government entities like the Maine House also have a right to express their own viewpoints on controversial issues. And that includes formally denouncing statements by individual lawmakers that a majority of the legislature finds repugnant.

But Maine’s House rules also provide that Libby “may not be allowed to vote or speak” on the House floor until she apologizes for the conduct that resulted in her censure. She refused to do so, and thus has effectively been stripped of her ability to vote on legislation since last winter. This also means that her constituents are effectively stripped of their representation in the state house, because their duly elected representative cannot vote on bills.

That is not allowed. Indeed, The Supreme Court’s decision in Bond v. Floyd (1966), which involved the Georgia House of........

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