US Supreme Court to decide legality of transgender school sports bans

By Andrew Chung (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to hear a bid by Idaho and West Virginia to enforce their state laws banning transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools, taking up another civil rights challenge to Republican-backed restrictions on transgender people. The justices took up the appeals by Idaho and West Virginia of decisions by lower courts siding with transgender students who sued. The students argued that the laws discriminate based on sex and transgender status in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that bars sex-based discrimination in education.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the matter during its next term, which begins in October. The justices did not act in an appeal by Republican lawmakers in Arizona defending a similar ban in that state. Twenty-seven states, most of them Republican-governed, have passed laws in recent years restricting participation in sports by transgender people. The Idaho and West Virginia laws designate sports teams at public schools according to "biological sex" and bar "students of the male sex" from female athletic teams. West Virginia Attorney General John "JB" McCuskey welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the matter, saying the state law "protects women and girls by ensuring the playing field is safe and fair." "The people of West Virginia know that it’s unfair to let male athletes compete against women," McCuskey added.

The issue of transgender rights is a flashpoint in the U.S. culture wars. Republican President Donald Trump has signed executive orders targeting what he called "gender ideology" and declaring that the federal government will recognize only two sexes: male and female, as well as attempting to exclude transgender girls and women from female sports. Trump also rescinded orders by his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, combating discrimination against gay and transgender people. The Supreme Court in a major ruling in June upheld a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

The 6-3 ruling powered by the court’s conservative majority found that the ban does not violate the 14th Amendment, as challengers to the law had argued. The challengers had argued that the measure unlawfully discriminated against these adolescents based on their sex or transgender status. The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented. The Supreme Court in May also allowed Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military to take effect. The Idaho challenge was brought by Lindsay (NYSE:LNN) Hecox, a transgender Boise State University student who had sought to join the women’s track and cross-country teams, but failed to qualify.

Hecox has instead participated in sports clubs, including soccer and running, at the public university. A federal judge blocked Idaho’s law in 2020, finding that it likely violates the constitutional equal protection guarantee. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s action in 2023 and, in an amended ruling, in 2024. The measure unlawfully discriminates based on sex and transgender status, the 9th Circuit concluded.

The challenge to the West Virginia law was brought by Becky Pepper-Jackson and the student’s mother Heather in 2021 after Jackson’s middle school barred Pepper-Jackson from joining the girls’ cross country and track teams due to the state’s ban. A federal judge ruled in Jackson’s favor at an early stage of the case, but later reversed course and sided with the state. The Supreme Court in 2023 refused the state’s bid to enforce the law as litigation proceeded. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April threw out the judge’s decision, ruling that the law’s exclusion of Jackson from girls’ teams violates the Title IX law.

The state law treats transgender girls differently from other girls, "which is - literally - the definition of gender identity discrimination," the 4th Circuit ruling stated, adding that this is also discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX.