This Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to intervene in the case of a young transgender girl who wants to join the women’s track and field team at her school.
This is the first time that the highest court in the United States has been called upon to rule on the place of transgender athletes in women’s sports, and there is a very political debate going on in this country.
Specifically, the lawsuit concerns a law passed in 2021 by West Virginia that, like other conservative states, prohibits students defined as “male” based on their “biology at birth” from participating in women’s competitions.
Since the law was passed, it has been challenged in court by Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender girl then 11 years old who wanted to join her school’s cross country team.
After several rejections, a federal appeals court ruled on February 22 to suspend the law pending a hearing on the merits.
West Virginia then urgently asked the Supreme Court to lift the blockade so that its law could apply while the trial continued.
“In recent years, biological men who self-identify as women have increasingly beaten biological women in women’s competition,” the state stressed in its appeal, asking the Supreme Court to “protect justice” in women’s sports.
Several associations supporting the cause of Becky Pepper-Jackson, including the influential American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, its English acronym), stressed in a statement that West Virginia is an “elite sports competition that has nothing to do” with this situation.
When the teenager managed to compete in women’s races, “she often ended up in last place,” but her “mother had never seen her so happy,” her lawyers said, according to court documents.
The Supreme Court is not called upon to decide on the merits at this stage and can simply uphold or reverse the decision of the Court of Appeal without saying anything else.
So far, the Supreme Court has avoided legal battles over transgender rights, with the exception of a workplace discrimination ruling in 2020, when it found that a funeral home failed to comply by firing a transgender employee after his transition.