Supreme Court docket takes up circumstances on transgender athletes

The Supreme Court docket on Thursday added two circumstances on transgender athletes to its docket for the 2025-26 time period. In Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., the justices will think about whether or not state legal guidelines limiting participation in ladies’ and girls’s sports activities to athletes who have been born feminine violate the equal safety clause of the 14th Modification or, within the West Virginia case, Title IX. 

The circumstances will possible be among the many most carefully watched of the upcoming time period, they usually come on the heels of the Supreme Court docket’s 6-3 determination upholding Tennessee’s ban on sure medical remedies for transgender minors in United States v. Skrmetti, which was launched on June 18. In that case, the court docket’s six Republican-appointed justices mentioned the ban didn’t must fulfill heightened scrutiny and didn’t violate the equal safety clause as a result of it classifies sufferers primarily based on age and medical prognosis, not on intercourse. 

Within the two circumstances granted Thursday, the justices will once more think about when legal guidelines concerning transgender rights should fulfill heightened scrutiny below the Structure’s equal safety clause. The states concerned – Idaho in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia in West Virginia v. B.P.J. – declare that courts ought to assess their transgender sports activities insurance policies utilizing a much less stringent authorized customary and that the equal safety clause has lengthy been held to permit sex-separated sports activities groups. 

The Idaho case facilities on the state’s Equity in Girls’s Sports activities Act, which attracts “an across-the-board distinction primarily based on intercourse,” stopping transgender athletes from competing in ladies’ and girls’s sports activities leagues, because the state’s petition for a writ of certiorari defined. The act was challenged by a transgender faculty scholar, who secured an injunction from the district court docket, which was upheld by the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the ninth Circuit. The 9th Circuit utilized heightened scrutiny and concluded that the act possible violates the equal safety clause. 

Within the West Virginia case, a transgender teen challenged the state’s Save Girls’s Sports activities Act, which bars athletes who have been born male from collaborating on ladies’ sports activities groups in aggressive and/or contact sports activities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dominated within the teen’s favor, deciding that the act violates Title IX.  

The circumstances granted on Thursday will possible be argued this fall. The court docket’s determination isn’t anticipated to return earlier than 2026.