WASHINGTON: On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning transgender athletes from women’s sports at public schools, one of several Republican-backed measures targeting LGBTQ rights.
The justices denied West Virginia’s request to lift the injunction against the law that a lower court had imposed. At the same time, litigation continues over its legality in the challenge brought by a twelve-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson. Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the decision.
The law passed in 2021 designates sports teams at public schools, and also including universities, according to “biological sex” and bars man students from women athletic teams “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
In the lawsuit, Pepper-Jackson and her mom Heather argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the United States Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law and the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.
West Virginia said in the court filing that it can lawfully assign athletic teams by sex rather than gender identity “where biological differences between females and males are the reason those separate teams exist.”
West Virginia Patrick Morrisey, Attorney General, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision but predicted the state would ultimately prevail. “It’s basic fairness and common sense not to have biological men play in women’s sports,” he said.
“This was the baseless and cruel effort to keep Becky from where she belongs–playing alongside her peers as a teammate and friend,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal, an LGBT legal group, said. The groups are representing Pepper-Jackson along with the Cooley law firm.
Pepper-Jackson, who attends the middle school in the West Virginia city of Bridgeport, sued after being prohibited from trying out for the girls’ cross-country and track teams.
