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When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to ban transgender youth from seeking certain medical treatments, advocates and lawyers took some comfort that the narrow written ruling did not appear to endanger transgender rights more broadly.
That feeling is short-lived. Shortly after last June’s ruling, the court took up another controversial topic that has fueled America’s culture war on transgender rights, agreeing to rule on the legality of a state law that bans transgender athletes from competing on girls’ sports teams in public schools.
Two cases involving such bans, in Idaho and West Virginia, will be argued Tuesday in the nation’s top judicial body, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.
States are appealing lower court rulings that sided with trans student prosecutions. This reflects a broader national trend, with 27 states, mostly run by Republicans, passing laws in recent years restricting transgender participation in sports.
“In a way, we were all relieved to think, well, at least it’s limited to this context,” ACLU attorney Joshua Block said of last year’s ruling upholding Tennessee’s Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care.
Bullock, who represents challengers to the sports ban, said that’s why the fact that the court agreed to take up the sports case a few weeks later “feels heavy.”
Legal experts say the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding state law could have ripple effects beyond sports, determining the validity of a host of laws and policies that limit the rights of transgender people. republican president Donald TrumpThe administration supports Idaho and West Virginia and will defend the legality of the ban during Tuesday’s debate.
Jessica Clarke, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said: “While these two cases raise only questions about transgender athletes’ participation in gender-segregated sports, they could have implications for transgender rights on a wide range of issues regarding transgender participation in public life, including restroom access, harassment in the classroom, identification, the military and health care.”
Clark added: “A sweeping ruling could cut off many legal avenues for trans people to challenge all forms of discrimination and exclusion.”
Trump takes aim at power
Transgender people face increasing restrictions at the state and national levels. Trump has taken a particularly hard line since returning to office last year, dismissing transgender people’s gender identities as lies and issuing a number of executive orders limiting their rights.
A Trump directive stipulates that the U.S. government will recognize only two genders, male and female. Another tried Exclude transgender athletes From the women’s movement.
The Supreme Court has sent a signal pity Some of Trump’s efforts.
It made Trump ban transgender people army and bar passport Applicants choose a gender for the document that reflects their gender identity.
In Tennessee’s case, it allows states to ban treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under 18 with gender dysphoria, a clinical diagnosis of severe distress caused by a person’s gender identity being inconsistent with the sex assigned at birth.
For supporters of transgender rights, the setbacks are shocking in light of a landmark court ruling in 2020 that protected transgender people from workplace discrimination.
Laws in Idaho and West Virginia designate public school sports teams based on “biological sex” and prohibit “male students” from participating in female sports teams.
The students who filed the lawsuit argued that the laws, which discriminate based on a person’s sex or transgender status, violate the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that prohibits denial of benefits or discrimination in education “on the basis of sex.”
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, a Republican, told Reuters the importance of these laws was obvious.
“Are we going to create a system where women have a safe, equitable place to play sports in the future?” McCaskey asked.
McCaskey said the state’s law creates certainty for female athletes that “all the hard work and all the sacrifices you make to excel in your sport will not be offset by a biological male who has an innate physical advantage over you.”
McCaskey said the law does not discriminate against transgender people “because they can play on teams with people who share a similar biological situation to them.”
The Idaho Challenge was started by Lindsay Hecox, a transgender Boise State student who participated in soccer and running clubs at the public university.
Hecox, 25, who recently decided to retire from sports, is seeking to have the case dismissed. Hecox told the Supreme Court in a filing that this was done in part out of concerns about harassment from negative public scrutiny and “a general increase in intolerance of transgender people.”
The court said it would wait to hear arguments before deciding whether Hecox’s challenge is now moot.
The challenge to the West Virginia law was filed by Becky Pepper-Jackson and her mother, Heather Jackson. The lawsuit came after Pepper-Jackson was barred from the girls’ cross country and track and field teams in high school because of the state’s ban.
Pepper-Jackson is now in 10th grade at high school in Bridgeport, West Virginia. The lower court ruling allowed Pepper-Jackson to compete in the shot put and discus.
“In 2021, politicians in my state passed a law prohibiting me, the only transgender student-athlete in the state, from playing basketball. This is unfair to me and every transgender kid who just wants the freedom to be themselves,” Pepper-Jackson, 15, told reporters in a recorded statement.
Bullock said the use of puberty-blocking drugs or gender-affirming hormones by transgender students is critical to whether states can legally impose those bans on them, “especially when they have eliminated or prevented any biological differences that might result in any performance advantage.”
States disagree, claiming the advantages remain.
A federal judge blocked the Idaho law, arguing it could violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s ruling in 2023.
The judge in Pepper-Jackson’s case sided with the state, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, reversed that ruling in 2024, ruling that her exclusion from the women’s team was “aggravated treatment on the basis of sex” and caused her legal harm in violation of Title IX.
Unlike the Tennessee case, the Supreme Court may not be able to avoid solve In Idaho and West Virginia, there is controversy over whether state laws classify people based on gender or transgender status and, if so, whether that would trigger greater judicial scrutiny, making the measures harder to defend in court.
Likewise, it may need to decide whether the rationale for its 2020 ruling protecting transgender workers under Title VII extends to education under the similarly worded Title IX.
Legal experts are watching whether courts are willing to consider a person’s individual circumstances (rather than an entire population) when determining whether sex discrimination has occurred. Refusal to do so may make it more difficult to bring certain lawsuits.
“This will have significant implications for transgender rights and other areas of equal protection law,” said Katie Ayre, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law.