The transgender athlete cases: an explainer

Who are the challengers in the cases?

There are two challengers – both transgender women – in two separate cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., which will be argued on the same day, Tuesday, Jan. 13. One challenger is Lindsay Hecox, now 24 years old, who filed this lawsuit when seeking to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox did not make the NCAA teams at BSU but competes at the club level.

The other challenger is B.P.J., a 15-year-old high school student who has publicly identified as female since the third grade. B.P.J. takes medicine to stave off the onset of male puberty and has also begun to receive hormone therapy with estrogen. B.P.J’s mother, Heather Jackson, went to court on her child’s behalf when she learned that the West Virginia law would bar B.P.J. from participating on the girls’ middle school sports teams.

What are the state laws that led to these challenges? 

Idaho’s law, enacted in 2020, is known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The first of its kind in the United States, the law imposes a flat ban on the participation of transgender women and girls on women’s and girls’ sports teams in public schools at all levels, from elementary school through college.

The West Virginia law at the center of that case, the Save Women’s Sports Act, was enacted in 2021. It bars transgender women and girls from participating on women’s and girls’ sports team in public secondary schools and colleges.  

Who is defending the laws in the Supreme Court?

In the Idaho case, the main defender is Bradley Little, the state’s governor, along with Boise State University, various state and local officials, and two collegiate athletes who joined the lawsuit to defend the law.

In the West Virginia case, the state is defending the law, along with the state board of education, a county board of education, two state education officials, and a former collegiate soccer player who joined the lawsuit to defend the law.

What federal laws and constitutional provisions did the challengers contend the state laws violated?

When they filed their lawsuits, Hecox and B.P.J. argued that the Idaho and West Virginia bans, respectively, violate Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding, as well as the Constitution’s equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.

How did these cases get to the Supreme Court?

Both of these cases have had long roads to the court. Indeed, Idaho native Elizabeth Prelogar, who spent nearly four years as the U.S. solicitor general in the Biden administration until leaving that job in January 2025, was listed as one of Hecox’s lawyers on her brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit before she was tapped for government service.

In August 2020, a federal district court in Idaho temporarily barred the state from enforcing the law, concluding that it likely violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the laws.

The 9th Circuit upheld the district court’s ruling. It concluded that the law discriminates based on transgender status in violation of the 14th amendment because “its text, structure, findings, and effect all demonstrate that the purpose of the Act was to categorically ban transgender women and girls from public school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.” The law also discriminates on the basis of sex, the panel continued, because students on girls’ and women’s sports teams, but not “participants in male athletics,” are subject “to invasive sex verification procedures to implement” the law. The full 9th Circuit then declined to rehear the case.  

In B.P.J.’s case, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin issued an order in 2021 that temporarily barred the state from enforcing its law against B.P.J. That allowed B.P.J. to compete on the middle school girls’ track and cross-country teams while the litigation continued. In January 2023, however, Goodwin issued a ruling in the state’s favor.

B.P.J. appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which reversed the district court ruling. In a decision in April 2024, the court of appeals held that the law violates Title IX by discriminating against B.P.J. on the basis of sex.

Idaho and West Virginia filed petitions for review of the lower courts’ rulings in July 2024. However, the court waited until after its June 2025 decision in United States v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on certain forms of medical treatment for transgender minors, to grant those petitions.  

What happened the first time the West Virginia case came to the Supreme Court?

After the district court’s 2023 ruling for the state, B.P.J. asked the 4th Circuit to pause that order in hopes of being allowed to continue to participate on the girls’ track team. When the court of appeals granted B.P.J.’s request, the state went to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene and allow the district court’s ruling to take effect while litigation continued.  

The Supreme Court turned down West Virginia’s request. Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s order, in a brief opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Alito would have allowed the state to enforce the law and keep B.P.J. off the team. In his view, the court of appeals should not have blocked a state law “on an important subject without a word of explanation” after the district court had ruled for West Virginia “on a fact-intensive record.”

What has the Supreme Court said about the rights of transgender people?

In the 2020 case Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ruled that federal employment discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch (and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan), the majority held that a funeral home that fired a transgender employee violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars employment discrimination “because of sex.” Gorsuch explained that when an employer fires an employee “for being homosexual or transgender,” the employer “fires that person” because of his or her sex – that is, “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”

Five years later, in United States v. Skrmetti, Roberts wrote for a different 6-3 majority in upholding Tennessee’s ban on certain forms of medical treatment for transgender minors. In an opinion joined by Gorsuch as well as Thomas, Alito, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Roberts determined that the law should be subject to rational basis review, the least stringent constitutional test, rather than heightened scrutiny, because the Tennessee law does not draw classifications based on sex. Instead, he emphasized, the law drew distinctions based on age and the purpose for which the medical treatments were being used.  

Similarly, Roberts rebuffed the challengers’ contention that the Tennessee law discriminates against transgender people, which the challengers argued are a “suspect” or “quasi-suspect” class – that is, people who have historically been subject to discrimination (which would require any discrimination against them be subject to heightened scrutiny). The Supreme Court, Roberts stressed, has never ruled on whether transgender people are such a class, and the majority declined to do so in Skrmetti.

Tennessee’s law, Roberts concluded, survives rational basis review, which requires only that there be “plausible reasons” for the government’s actions. The Tennessee law, he wrote, “responds directly to” the uncertainty among medical experts about “the risks and benefits associated with administering puberty blockers and hormones” to transgender minors.

What arguments do the states make in the Supreme Court?

Idaho tells the justices that “male athletes have numerous recognized physical and physiological advantages over females that begin before puberty and persist despite reduced circulating testosterone.” Therefore, the state said, its legislature made the decision to preserve “fairness and safety” in girls’ and women’s sports by barring transgender women from participating in those sports, and the Supreme Court should not second-guess that decision.

Idaho contends that its law can pass any level of constitutional scrutiny. But it should only be subject to rational basis review, it writes, because Hecox is not challenging whether the state can require sports teams to be divided based on sex. Instead, it says, Hecox simply contends that the definition of sex for purposes of those divisions should rest on an athlete’s gender identity. And the Idaho law can pass rational basis review, the state argues, because the state has an interest in promoting fair athletic opportunities for women and girls.

Idaho also insists that its law does not discriminate against athletes because they are transgender. It notes that “[n]one of the Act’s operative provisions classify based on whether someone identifies as transgender.” Instead, it stresses, the law draws distinctions “based on ‘biological sex’ alone.”

In its brief, West Virginia similarly emphasizes (quoting Skrmetti) that its law “implicates ‘fierce scientific and policy debates’ that elected legislators are best able to resolve.”

West Virginia rejects any comparison to Bostock, telling the justices that when it comes to the workplace, “sex is generally irrelevant. But Title IX governs education, where biological differences are critical to athletic fairness. The Act designates sports based on biological sex—exactly what Title IX permits.”

Finally, the state contends that B.P.J.’s equal protection claim falls short because its law treats B.P.J. the same as other athletes in the same circumstances – for example, it suggests, by treating transgender girls the same as boys who are not transgender.

What arguments do the challengers make in the Supreme Court?

Hecox first urges the court not to decide her case at all (more on that below). But if it doesn’t do that, she says, the justices should leave the district court’s order barring enforcement of the law in place and send it back so that the state can argue over facts that it had not previously asserted – such as the differences between men and women “that necessitate separate sports teams.” The Supreme Court, Hecox argues, should not consider those facts in the first instance.

Additionally, Hecox argues to the justices that the Idaho law should be subject to heightened scrutiny because it “discriminates on the basis of transgender status.” Hecox points to a history of legal discrimination against transgender people, including laws that bar cross-dressing, laws prohibiting bars from hosting “female impersonators,” and immigration laws barring transgender people from entering the United States.

Transgender people, Hecox writes, “have not ‘yet been able to meaningfully vindicate their rights through the political process’ in much of the Nation.” Hecox notes that the United States has never had an openly transgender senator or federal judge, “and there has been only one openly transgender member of the House of Representatives.” “Government discrimination against transgender people will only intensify if this Court decides that laws discriminating against transgender Americans are presumptively constitutional,” Hecox concluded.

Hecox also argues that the Idaho ban “sweeps far too broadly by categorically excluding all transgender women and girls, many of whom (like Lindsay) have circulating testosterone at levels typical of cisgender women and girls” – and therefore does not advance the interest that the state asserts in maintaining equal opportunities in women’s sports.

B.P.J. (who is represented by many of the same lawyers who represent Hecox) first urges, like Hecox, the justices not to engage with the states’ invocation of any advantages that transgender athletes may have, arguing that they should not consider claims and evidence that were not before the lower courts in her case.

B.P.J.’s arguments on the merits generally focus on the law as it applies to her, rather than to transgender athletes more broadly. B.P.J. begins with the text of Title IX, which bars discrimination against a “person” “on the basis of sex.” Pointing to the court’s decision in Bostock, B.P.J. contends that “treating a student differently because they are transgender inherently entails differential treatment of a ‘person’ ‘on the basis of sex.’” Indeed, B.P.J. suggests, because she has lived as a girl for seven years, barring her from competing on the girls’ sports teams effectively prohibits her from competing on any sports teams.

The West Virginia law should also be subject to heightened scrutiny, at least as it applies to her, B.P.J. says, because it draws distinctions based on transgender status “and because it was enacted, at least in part, for the purpose of excluding transgender girls from school sports.” The law fails that test, B.P.J. contends, because she has never gone through male puberty and has received hormone treatments that have caused her to develop female physiological characteristics. Therefore, B.P.J. argues, she does not have the athletic advantage that West Virginia says it is concerned about protecting for girls who are not transgender. “Indeed,” B.P.J. writes, “the breadth of the exclusion demonstrates that West Virginia’s real objection is to transgender girls’ mere presence on a team with cisgender girls.”

What does the Trump administration say about this issue?

On Feb. 5, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to revoke funding for schools that allow transgender women and girls to compete on women’s and girls’ sports teams, calling such participation “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls.”

In a “friend of the court” brief filed in the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer calls the Idaho and West Virginia laws (as well as others like them) “eminently reasonable.”

Why is Hecox asking the court to drop her case?

For a variety of reasons that included her father’s death, her own illness, and unwanted public attention, Hecox decided that she will no longer play sports in Idaho. Hecox therefore dismissed her claims against the state in the district court, and they cannot be filed again.

Hecox then came to the Supreme Court in early September, asking the justices to dismiss her case on the ground that it is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. Hecox’s lawyers urged the justices to throw out the 9th Circuit’s decision in her favor and send the case back to the lower court with directions to dismiss it.

What is the state’s reaction to Hecox’s request?

Idaho urged the justices to go ahead and decide the case, arguing that it is not moot. First, it said, Hecox should not have dismissed the case in the district court because Hecox had agreed to pause all of the proceedings there. And in a brief filed on Oct. 16, Idaho noted that the district court had rejected Hecox’s efforts to voluntarily dismiss the case for precisely that reason. But in any event, it continued, the state continues to be injured by the 9th Circuit’s decision because it cannot enforce its law. Moreover, the state concluded, the Supreme Court “has an ‘interest in preventing litigants from attempting to manipulate the Court’s jurisdiction.’”

On Oct. 20, the Supreme Court indicated that it would not act on Hecox’s request until after the oral argument.

What will happen at next week’s arguments?

The two cases will be argued separately, beginning with Hecox’s case and then followed by B.P.J.’s case. The court has allocated one hour for each case, but the arguments are likely to take significantly longer.

Three lawyers will argue in each case: one representing the challenger (Hecox or B.P.J.), one representing the state (Idaho or West Virginia), and one representing the Trump administration. The court has not yet released the names of the lawyers who will be arguing next week.

When could the court issue its decision?

The justices normally release all of the opinions in argued cases before they begin their summer recess in late June or early July. The court’s ruling could come before then, but given these cases’ high profile and the extent to which the justices are likely to be divided, it seems unlikely to come quickly.