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| AP |
The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a case that will determine whether transgender female student athletes can be prevented from joining girls’ and women’s sports teams at public schools.
The justices are set to hear challenges to laws in Idaho and West Virginia after lower court rulings sided with transgender students who sued when they were blocked from competing.
“I am optimistic that after hearing the case, the Supreme Court will restore sanity to athletics and allow West Virginia to enforce its commonsense law that prevents boys from competing in girl’s sports,” Mountain State Gov. Patrick Morrisey fired off in an X post.
Twenty-seven states have passed laws in recent years that restrict participation in female sports for male-to-female trans students.
In Idaho and West Virginia specifically, state laws specify that sports teams at public schools are based on “biological sex” and ban “students of the male sex” from joining female athletic teams.
The challenge to the West Virginia law was brought by Becky Pepper-Jackson in 2021 after her middle school banned her from joining the girls’ cross country and track teams.
Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade.
A federal judge initially ruled in the student’s favor at an early stage of the case, but later reversed course and ended up siding with the state. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Ted Shaffrey/AP |
The Supreme Court will decide whether states can ban transgender girls from girls’ sports teams, plunging the high court back into the national debate around the rights of trans people.
The court on Thursday added a pair of cases to next term’s docket about state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban people assigned male at birth from competing on school teams for women and girls. About half the states have similar laws, according to court papers.
The justices announced they will hear appeals from Idaho and West Virginia against lower-court orders that blocked the bans from taking effect. An appeals court ruled that Idaho’s law violates the Constitution’s equal protection cause by targeting transgender people, while another appeals court concluded that the West Virginia law violates Title IX, the federal law banning most sex discrimination by schools.
Arguments in the cases are likely to take place in the fall with decisions expected from the high court by June 2026.
This is the Supreme Court’s third major foray into transgender-related issues in recent years. Last month, the justices voted 6-3 to uphold a Tennessee law that bans transgender medical care for minors. And in 2020, the high court issued an unexpected 6-3 decision that federal law bans discrimination against transgender people in employment.
The Trump administration has adopted a range of policies that LGBTQ+ advocates see as curtailing transgender rights. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February directing the Department of Education to strip federal funds from colleges that allow trans women to compete on women’s teams. Just this week, the University of Pennsylvania struck a deal with the administration and agreed to adopt “biology-based definitions” of men and women.
The Supreme Court has already given Trump the go-ahead to proceed with one of his policies targeting transgender people: a ban on trans people serving in the military.
In May, the justices allowed Trump to move forward with that ban, which precludes trans people from joining the military and calls for the involuntary discharge of those already serving. The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the high court’s action, which granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to lift a lower court’s injunction against the ban. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
+++++Is This the Turning Point for Women’s Sports? Supreme Court Steps Into the Fray+++++
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