The Supreme Court Will Rule on States Banning Trans Athletes From Girls’ Sports

The Supreme Court will weigh in on state efforts to bar transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. 

On Thursday, the court accepted two cases involving transgender students challenging state-level bans in Idaho and West Virginia that bar their participation in high school and collegiate level sports leagues. 

Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old from West Virginia who takes puberty blockers and was banned from participating in the women’s cross country running team at her school, filed a challenge to the state’s ban on trans girls’ participation in sports in 2021. Lindsay Hecox, also a transgender long distance runner, sued Idaho in 2020 after the state passed a law prohibiting trans and intersex individuals from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. 

Both Pepper Jackson and Hecox won injunctions against the implementations of the laws in their home states, and the question is now being taken up the Supreme Court on the heels of a major decision upholding restrictions on gender affirming care for transgender individuals. 

In June, the court ruled in a 6-3 decision that state laws prohibiting the prescription of gender-affirming hormone therapies and puberty-pausing medications for transgender minors and youth are constitutional. The decision set the stage for the advancement of a slew of anti-trans laws across more than two dozen states. 
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“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play,” Joshua Block, Senior Counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union. “School athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the trans athlete cases in the fall, and rule on them next year.