XPost: law.court.federal, or.politics, alt.transgendered   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: bud-light-sucks-dicks@budlight.com   
      
   WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday over state   
   laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic   
   teams.   
      
   Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West   
   Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated   
   Supreme Court might not follow suit.   
      
   In just the past year, the justices ruled in favor state bans on   
   gender-affirming care for transgender youth and allowed multiple   
   restrictions on transgender people to be enforced.   
      
   The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by President Donald   
   Trump to target transgender Americans, begnning on the first day of his   
   second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the   
   military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.   
      
   The culture war cases come from Idaho and West Virginia, among the first   
   of the more than two dozen Republican-led states that have banned   
   transgender athletes from girls' and women’s teams.   
      
   The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by   
   transgender people versus the need for fair competition for women and   
   girls, the main argument made by the states.   
      
   In the first case, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over Idaho's   
   first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women's track   
   and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. She didn't   
   make either squad, but competed in club-level soccer and running.   
      
   Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, has been   
   taking puberty-blocking medication, publicly identified as a girl since   
   age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing   
   her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to   
   compete in girls' sports in West Virginia.   
      
   Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country   
   runner in middle school to a statewide third-place finish in the discus   
   in just her first year of high school.   
      
   Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion   
   Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and   
   beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state   
   bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball   
   players Sue Byrd and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.   
      
   The high-court arguments are expected to focus on whether the sports   
   bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title   
   IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education.   
      
   In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a   
   landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in   
   the workplace, finding that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in   
   employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and   
   behavior they otherwise tolerate.   
      
   But last year, the six conservative justices declined to apply the same   
   sort of analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care   
   for transgender minors.   
      
   The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argue   
   there is no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination   
   to Title IX, which dramatically increased opportunities for girls and   
   women in school sports.   
      
   Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argue that the law protects individuals like   
   their client from discrimination. They are asking for a ruling that   
   would apply to the unique circumstances of her early transition. In   
   Hecox's case, her lawyers want the court to dismiss the case because she   
   has forsworn trying to play on women's teams.   
      
   Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken   
   on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic   
   Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after Trump   
   signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.   
      
   The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated   
   Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October   
   2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat”   
   favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on   
   sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the   
   gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or   
   “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.   
      
      
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