The Supreme Court denies the West Virginia request to enforce the sports ban against trans athletes

A U.S. Court Order Enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment on Sporting Sex at Birth: A Case Study of a Transgender Girl in West Virginia

The state defended its ban on allowing males and females to compete in sports on the basis that biological differences between males and females matter in sports. The state said that a team based on sex at birth doesn’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law.

The court’s action came on its emergency docket, sometimes dubbed the shadow docket because decisions are made without full briefing or argument, and decided with little or no explanation.

The court has come under criticism for its aggressive use of emergency dockets to deal with controversial issues, although this time the court stayed it’s hand.

Justice Alito said that the federal courts should not forbid the enforcement of the law because of the circumstances.

West Virginia’s request to the Supreme Court represents the first time the sports issue has reached the high court. Since 2020, more than a dozen states have enacted similar measures like H.B. 3289, which gained traction in GOP-led states in recent years.

In this case, West Virginia’s law was challenged by a 12-year-old middle school transgender girl named Becky Pepper-Jackson, who has lived as a girl since fourth grade, according to court papers. She has not experienced puberty, so she is getting puberty-delaying treatment and hormone therapy, according to her brief. She won’t experience the same physical symptoms of puberty that typical boys do, and she will develop what is known as a hormonal puberty of normal girls.

The defendants in this litigation have not sought this Court’s emergency intervention and have “stipulated” that her involvement in the girls track and field did not cause her.

The Supreme Court Denys a Sports Incrimination Case: “It is My Faith that I Am from a Transsexual” and “Is My Faith Real”

He said that females may be able to beat some males, but it is generally accepted that males beat females athletically because of physical differences. “This is not an overbroad generalization, but rather a general principle that realistically reflects the average physical differences between the sexes.”

“We are grateful that the Supreme Court today acknowledged that there was no emergency and that Becky should be allowed to continue to participate with her teammates on her middle school track team, which she has been doing without incident for three going on four seasons,” the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of West Virginia and Lambda Legal, all of which are representing Pepper-Jackson, said in a statement.

In addition to West Virginia, a number of other Republican-controlled states have enacted similar sports bans, with at least eight putting one on their books in 2022 alone. Conservatives have argued that women and girls with different genders have advantages over cis gender women and girls in sports, despite a lack of direct or consistent research.

Among the LGBTQ advocacy groups that expressed skepticism of the announcement was Lambda Legal, which said it was “concerned about whether the proposed rule can properly eliminate the discrimination that transgender students experience due to the pervasive bias and ignorance about who they are.”

Pepper-Jackson has been able to compete on her middle school’s cross-country and track teams as a result of the lower court’s injunction, and the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the emergency request means she can continue doing so.

The law was on the books for only two years, but in recent court files lawyers for Pepper- Jackson said that the state is unaware of any student who wants to play school sports in West Virginia other than her.

The case implicates a question fraught with emotions and differing perspectives. That is all the more reason to defer to state lawmakers pending appeal,” the attorneys told the court. “The decision was the West Virginia Legislature’s to make. The end of this litigation will confirm that it made a valid one.”

“This application concerns an important issue that this Court is likely to be required to address in the near future, namely, whether either Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 … or the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits a State from restricting participation in women’s or girls’ sports based on genes or physiological or anatomical characteristics,” he wrote.

Steve said that the court stayed out of the dispute because of procedural issues with the state of West Virginia.

Morrisey and attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom told the Court that the act should be allowed to continue because of the injunction that has been granted by the Fourth Circuit.

The attorneys for Pepper- Jackson argued that the state was wrong to say that it was being harmed by the injunction.

A Proposed Title IX Rule Change Keeping Transgender Students from Playing Basketball: The View from the Supreme Court’s Supremum

Several friend-of-the-court briefs were filed to the Supreme Court in support of West Virginia’s request, with one signed by a number of famous athletes, including the tennis player Martina Navratilova, and Olympic champions Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona.

After 30 days of public comment, the proposed Title IX changes will be published to the Federal Register. The first steps are the beginning of changing the law. If the proposal survives the process, there will not be a change in the rule for months or years.

The rule change comes as GOP-led states across the country continue to push a variety of anti-trans measures, including bills intended to keep transgender students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Biden has consistently spoken out against such efforts, but Thursday’s announcement represents the most significant action yet that his administration has taken to combat them.

“We look forward to submitting comments and collaborating with the administration to remove remaining barriers to full and equal participation by trans youth,” said the group’s senior attorney in a statement.

Legislators in the state of Kansas voted on Wednesday to repeal a ban on trans sports after their governor vetoes it. Similar sports bans were enacted in eight states.

In pushing such measures, conservatives have argued that transgender women and girls have physical advantages over cisgender women and girls in sports, though a 2017 report found “no direct or consistent research” on any such advantage.