XPost: law.court.federal, or.politics, alt.transgendered   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: pos@liberals.cobs   
      
   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.   
      
   That's about the same number that could die of COVID again.   
      
   Make it so.   
      
   About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or   
   3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams   
   Institute at the UCLA School of Law.   
      
   A decision is expected by early summer.   
      
   https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/supreme-court-takes-culture-war-b   
   attle-transgender-athletes-129154729   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)