The rulings could determine whether transgender athletes may continue to compete in women’s sports in states that currently permit it, and will test whether the Constitution’s equal protection clause or Title IX extends to transgender people in scholastic and collegiate athletics — a question the court has so far declined to resolve directly.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Tuesday in two cases testing whether state laws that ban transgender girls and women from female sports competitions violate the Constitution or Title IX, the landmark federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The cases bring together challenges from West Virginia and Idaho and are expected to produce decisions by early summer.
West Virginia sophomore Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, and Idaho college student Lindsay Hecox have separately challenged state laws barring them from competing in women’s sports. West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women’s sports, and is among more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the Supreme Court has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced over the past year.
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution’s equal protection clause or Title IX protects transgender people in the context of scholastic and collegiate athletics. The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people constitutes sex discrimination but declined to extend that logic when it upheld state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors last June — a ruling that also forced Pepper-Jackson to travel out of state for her own care.
Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia in her first year of high school and placed eighth among shot putters. She attributes her improvement to hard work, regular practice, and weightlifting. She has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since third grade, according to the Associated Press.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an AP interview conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because … this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said the law is justified by biological differences between men and women.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” McCuskey said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
John Bursch, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian law firm that has led legal challenges against transgender policies, framed the litigation as part of a broader social reckoning.
“I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman,” Bursch said. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
Heather Jackson, Pepper-Jackson’s mother, offered a different account of what motivates the effort to bar her daughter from competition.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. “This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams matching the sex assigned at birth. About 2 in 10 were strongly or somewhat opposed, and about one-quarter had no opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8% of the adult population, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3% of that age group, identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Despite the small number of transgender athletes directly affected, the issue has taken on broader political significance. President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including removing transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The Supreme Court’s ruling could also affect separate legal efforts to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If she is forced to stop competing, Pepper-Jackson said she will continue to lift weights and play trumpet in her school’s concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.