The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that transgender athletes can compete on female sports team in West Virginia.
The justices denied the state’s emergency request to lift an appeals court’s injunction, which enabled a 12-year-old transgender girl to compete on her middle school’s female teams until the three-judge panel reaches a final decision, The Hill reports.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision because the issue at the center of the court fight is an important one that “this court is likely to be required to address in the near future.”
At the center of the dispute is a state law enacted in 2021 called the Save Women’s Sports Act. It bars transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams in the state’s public schools. The law permits students to play on athletics teams based on their biological sex and defines “male” and “female” by a student’s “reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” according to CBS News.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of 12-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender girl,who wanted to compete on her middle school’s girls’ cross country team.
Becky’s lawyers argue that the law violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and Title IX, the landmark civil right law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools or programs that receive federal funding.
A federal judge initially ruled in Pepper-Jackson’s favor but reversed course in January and allowed it to be enforced against her. Pepper-Jackson appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and they again blocked the state from applying the law.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court calling the 4th Circuit’s injunction “unreasoned and incorrect.”
“This is a procedural setback, but we remain confident that when this case is ultimately determined on the merits, we will prevail,” Morrisey, said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday.
