The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an attempt by West Virginia to prevent a transgender student from participating in girls’ sports.
As a result, a law enacted in 2021 called the Save Women’s Sports Act cannot be enforced against 12-year-old transgender girl Becky Pepper-Jackson while litigation continues.
Two of the court’s conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, noted that they would have granted the application. Alito in a brief opinion faulted a lower court for failing to explain its reasoning.
“This is a procedural setback, but we remain confident that when this case is ultimately determined on the merits, we will prevail,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, said in a statement.
In barring transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports at the middle school, high school and college levels, the law says gender is “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” As such, it says, a female is a person “whose biological sex determined at birth as female.”
The law was challenged by Pepper-Jackson, then 11, who wanted to try out for the cross country and track teams in her middle school in Harrison County. She is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the LGBTQ group Lambda Legal.
“We are grateful that the Supreme Court today acknowledged that there was no emergency and that Becky should be allowed to continue to participate with her teammates on her middle school track team,” Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers said in a joint statement. They called the state’s attempt to enforce the law “a baseless and cruel effort.”
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