US Supreme Court Declines West Virginia’s Request To Allow Transgender Athlete Ban

A plea has been recently rejected by the US Supreme Court for asking permission to implement a state law prohibiting transgender women and girls from playing in a sports team.

The court dismissed West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s emergency plea to allow the state to enforce the 2021 law in an unsigned order, as it questions a person’s gender identity. This is the first time the sports controversy made it to the Supreme Court, thanks to West Virginia’s petition.

According to the media, more than a dozen states have passed comparable restrictions since 2020, demonstrating the significant momentum that measures like House Bill 3293 have gained in GOP-led legislatures in recent years across the US.

House Bill 3293, notably prevents transgender children from joining teams that “fit with their gender identity” by prohibiting single-sex participation in interscholastic athletic competitions.

Previously this year, a 12-year-old transgender girl named Becky Pepper-Jackson sued the state over the law immediately after it was passed, and a lower federal court ordered the state to temporarily halt the prohibition against her.

Further, the lower court’s order allowed Pepper-Jackson to compete on her middle school’s cross-country and track teams, and the US Supreme Court’s decision to reject the emergency request ensures that she can keep doing so.

Several Republican-controlled states, including at least eight in 2022 alone, have passed similar sports prohibitions in addition to West Virginia.

However, the previous year, the Supreme Court decided that LGBTQ employees are covered by the federal civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based workplace discrimination.

Although a 2017 audit found “no direct or consistent research” on any such benefit, conservatives have also suggested that transgender women and girls have physical advantages over cisgender women and girls in sports in order to campaign for such legislation.