US supreme court to weigh transgender student sports bans in key rights case
The decision means the court is prepared to take up another civil rights challenge to Republican-backed restrictions on transgender people.
The justices took up the state appeals of lower court decisions siding with a transgender students who sued.
The students argued that the laws discriminate based on sex and transgender status in violation of the US constitution's 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.
The supreme court is expected to hear arguments on the matter during its next term, which begins in October.
A total of 27 states, most of them Republican-governed, have passed laws in recent years restricting participation in sports by transgender people.
The Idaho and West Virginia laws designate sports teams at public schools according to 'biological sex' and bar 'students of the male sex' from female athletic teams.
The issue of transgender rights is a flashpoint in what has become a culture war in the US.
Donald Trump, upon taking back the White House, has signed executive orders declaring that the federal government will officially recognize only two sexes – male and female – as well as attempting to exclude transgender girls and women from female sports.
Trump also rescinded orders by his predecessor, Joe Biden, combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
The supreme court in a major ruling in June upheld a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
The 6-3 ruling powered by the court's conservative majority found that the ban does not violate the US constitution's 14th amendment promise of equal protection, as challengers to the law had argued. The challengers had argued that the measure unlawfully discriminated against these adolescents based on their sex or transgender status. The supreme court's three liberal justices dissented.
The supreme court in May also allowed Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military to take effect.
The challenge to the West Virginia law was brought by Becky Pepper-Jackson and the student's mother in 2021 after Pepper-Jackson's middle school barred her from joining the girls' cross-country and track teams due to the state's ban.
A federal judge ruled in Pepper-Jackson's favor at an early stage of the case, but later reversed course and sided with the state. The supreme court in 2023 refused the state's bid to enforce the law as litigation proceeded.
The Richmond, Virginia-based fourth US circuit court of appeals in April threw out the judge's decision, ruling that the law's exclusion of Pepper-Jackson from girls' teams violates the Title IX law. The state law treats transgender girls differently from other girls, 'which is - literally - the definition of gender identity discrimination', the fourth circuit ruling stated, adding that this is also discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX.
The Idaho challenge was brought by Lindsay Hecox, a transgender Boise State University student who had sought to join the women's track and cross-country teams, but failed to qualify. Hecox has instead participated in sports clubs, including soccer and running, at the public university.
A federal judge blocked Idaho's law in 2020, finding that Idaho's law likely violates the constitutional equal protection guarantee. The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals upheld the judge's action in 2023 and, in an amended ruling, in 2024.
The measure unlawfully discriminates based on sex and transgender status, the ninth circuit concluded.
Reuters contributed reporting
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