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.

A Second Opinion is a recurring series by Haley Proctor on the Second Amendment and constitutional litigation.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to hear two cases this term involving Second Amendment challenges to firearms regulations, with several more petitions pending. Given that the Second Amendment is at the forefront of Supreme Court litigation, I could think of no one better to speak to than Pete Patterson, a partner at Cooper & Kirk PLLC (where I am of counsel).

ScotusCrim is a recurring series by Rory Little focusing on intersections between the Supreme Court and criminal law.

After the month-long “winter break” in oral arguments, the justices return to the bench on Jan. 12 for only (around) seven hours of argument in nine cases. A single one of them is a significant criminal-law-related case: Wolford v. Lopez, to be argued on Jan. 20. Another two address the rights of trans persons, which as I previously noted in a comment about the court’s decision in United States v. Skrmetti raises potential criminal law issues in the future.

Meanwhile, in the recent denial of a stay regarding National Guard deployments (Trump v. Illinois on Dec. 23, 2025), two justices advanced a significant expansive view of the “party presentation principle” that I wrote about last month. Let’s address that first.

Updated on Jan. 8 at 5:03 p.m.

When the Supreme Court returns to the bench next week for the first argument of 2026, in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, it will confront a thorny dispute over the circumstances in which a federal contractor can transfer a case from state to federal court. The question comes to the justices in a high-profile case brought by Louisiana parishes – the equivalent of counties in that state – seeking to hold oil and gas companies liable for damage to the Louisiana coast. A federal appeals court in New Orleans rejected the companies’ latest attempt to move the case to federal court, but now the Supreme Court will weigh in. Litigants on both sides of the dispute tell the justices that the stakes are high, not only because of the amount of money in play, but also because of what the court’s ruling could mean for other companies that do business with the federal government.

As former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro prepares to fight drug, weapon, and narco-terrorism charges in the United States after being arrested in Caracas, Venezuela, early Saturday morning by U.S. military forces, legal scholars and analysts are putting a spotlight on past Supreme Court rulings about presidential authority, extraterritorial arrests, and the rights of foreign leaders while debating the legality of the Trump administration’s actions.

The cases they’re revisiting principally relate to two aspects of Saturday’s operation and the criminal case against Maduro: 1) Whether President Donald Trump had the authority to send U.S. forces into Venezuela to arrest Maduro; and 2) Maduro’s likely defense in U.S. courts.