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Becky Pepper-Jackson finishes third in discus west virginia Last year, even though she was only a freshman in high school. Pepper-Jackson, now 15 and a sophomore, realizes the upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia bans transgender girls like Pepper Jackson from competing in women’s and girls’ sports and is one of more than two dozen states with similar laws. Although West Virginia’s law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different in a conservative-dominated court Supreme CourtLast year, the bill allowed for a number of restrictions on transgender people.
On Tuesday, justices will hear arguments in two cases over whether sports bans violate the Constitution or Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from idahocollege student Lindsay Hecox challenged the state’s law.
A decision is expected in early summer.
president Donald Trumpof republican The Trump administration has targeted transgender Americans from day one of its second term, including expelling transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the national fight over transgender girls participating in sports, a fight that is playing out at the state and federal levels, with Republicans using the issue to fight for equity in sports for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press via Zoom. “This is what I’m here to do because… it’s important to me. I know it’s important to other people, too. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She was sitting on a couch in the home of her mother, Heather Jackson, outside Bridgeport, a rural community in West Virginia about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she also finished eighth in the shot put.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing in school and in the backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking drugs and has publicly identified as a girl since third grade, despite a Supreme Court ruling in June upholding a state ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, forcing her to travel out of state for treatment.
Her progress as an athlete was cited as a reason why she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. If we allow biological men to compete in sports against biological women, these differences will undermine women’s ability and status in those sports that we have struggled with for the past 50 years,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said in an interview with The Associated Press. McCaskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athletes in the state who have competed or are trying to compete in women’s or girls’ sports.
Although the number of transgender athletes is small, the issue has become incredibly important. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee have banned transgender women from participating in women’s sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at banning them.
The public generally supports these restrictions. An October 2025 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor requiring transgender children and teens to play only on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, rather than the gender with which they identify, while about 2 in 10 “strongly” or “somewhat” oppose it and about a quarter have no opinion.
In the United States, approximately 2.1 million adults, or 0.8 percent, and 724,000 people ages 13 to 17, or 3.3 percent, identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
Those aligned with the administration on the issue describe it in broader terms than sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings targeting transgender people.
“I think there’s cultural, political, legal pushback that supports the idea that a man can be a woman is just a lie,” said John Bursch, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm that has led legal campaigns against transgender people. “If we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to accept that fact. The sooner we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether on high school sports teams, in high school locker rooms and showers, in battered women’s shelters, in women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson came up with different terms to describe the efforts to keep her daughter away from sports in West Virginia.
“Hate. It’s just hate,” she said. “This community is today’s community. We have a long history of segregating marginalized groups in our communities.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the ugly aspects of the debate, including one contestant wearing a T-shirt at the championship game that read “Men Don’t Belong in Women’s Sports.”
“I hope these people educate themselves. So they know I’m just trying to have fun. That’s it. But it hurts sometimes, like, sometimes it makes me feel bad, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
A classmate identified in court documents as AC said Pepper-Jackson herself used graphic language to sexually bully her teammates.
Asked if she had said any of what was alleged, Pepper-Jackson said: “I didn’t. The school ruled there was no evidence that was true.”
The legal battle will hinge on whether the Constitution’s equal protection clause or Title IX anti-discrimination laws protect transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that discrimination against transgender people in the workplace is sex discrimination, but declined to extend the logic of that decision to health care cases for transgender minors.
The Supreme Court was filled with competing legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and academics.
The outcome could also impact separate legal efforts seeking to ban transgender athletes from competing in states that continue to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop playing, she said she can still lift weights and continue playing trumpet in school concerts and jazz bands.
“It’s going to hurt, I know it’s going to hurt, but it’s what I have to do,” she said.