01/13/26 05:55:00
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01/13 05:54 CST Supreme Court takes up culture war battle over transgender
athletes in school sports
Supreme Court takes up culture war battle over transgender athletes in school
sports
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) --- 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 youths 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, beginning 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, which
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 on the nine-member court 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 people 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, a Republican, 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.
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.
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Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at
https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
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