US Supreme Court takes up culture war battle over transgender athletes in school sports

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington [AP Photo]

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today [Macau time] over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams.

Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court might not follow suit.

In just the past year, the justices ruled in favor state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth and allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced.

The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by President Donald Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

The culture war cases come from Idaho and West Virginia, among the first of the more than two dozen Republican-led states that have banned transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s teams.

The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by transgender people versus the need for fair competition for women and girls, the main argument made by the states.

In the first case, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over Idaho’s first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. She didn’t make either squad, but competed in club-level soccer and running.

Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, has been taking puberty-blocking medication, publicly identified as a girl since age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls’ sports in West Virginia.

Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in middle school to a statewide third-place finish in the discus in just her first year of high school.

Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Byrd and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.

The high-court arguments are expected to focus on whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, finding that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.

But last year, the six conservative justices declined to apply the same sort of analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argue there is no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination to Title IX, which dramatically increased opportunities for girls and women in school sports.

Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argue that the law protects individuals like their client from discrimination.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

A decision is expected by early summer. MARK SHERMAN, WASHINGTON