Two US states ask Supreme Court to rule on anti-trans sports bans
Two states have asked the Supreme Court to decide on trans sports bans (Canva)
West Virginia and Idaho have asked the Supreme Court to decide whether states can lawfully enforce anti-trans sports bans.
The appeals mark the first time states have specifically asked the highest court in the US to decide on the ongoing legal battle and wider debate around trans students being able to compete in sports teams which are consistent with their gender identity under amendments to Title IX.
Title IX is the Biden administration’s landmark piece of civil rights legislation which protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programmes or activities that receive federal financial assistance. It’s best-known for ensuring gender equality in college sports.
President Joe Biden finalised new Title IX anti-discrimination rules – first proposed in 2022 – in April, which aim to protect people in public schools from sex-based discrimination and harassment, providing explicit protections for LGBTQ+ pupils and expressly prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked the amendments in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia – just days after a different judge blocked the expansion coming into force in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.
Lower courts have previously ruled the bans unlawful, but West Virginia officials have said, in their petition to the Supreme Court, that that decision “renders sex-separated sports an illusion”.
West Virginia’s Republican attorney general Patrick Morrisey wrote in court papers: “Muddled reasoning like the Fourth Circuit [court’s] will continue without this court’s intervention, and ‘a nationally uniform approach’ will never be possible,” CNN reported.
In Idaho’s court papers, attorney general Raúl Labrador, also a Republican, said: “So much of what women and girls have achieved for themselves over the course of several decades is being stolen from them, all under the guise of ‘equality’.
“The court should not wait any longer to correct these mistakes and to return the issue of protecting women’s sports to the people’s elected representatives.”
However, Joshua Block, who is representing the trans student at the heart of the West Virginia case, said the Fourth Circuit court made it “abundantly clear, our client deserves the opportunity to participate in sports teams without discrimination”.
He went on to say: “We will continue to defend the right of all students to play as who they are.”
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