The Supreme Court. Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key.
The U.S. Supreme Court on April 6 rejected West Virginia’s emergency appeal of an appellate court’s decision to block the state from enforcing an anti-transgender youth sports ban against a 12-year-old transgender girl.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted the application, but they were not joined by any of their four other conservative colleagues on the bench.
West Virginia’s lawyers were defending a 2021 statute, the Save Women’s Sports Act, that classifies student athletes based on their sex assigned at birth instead of how they identify, and they wanted to enforce the law pending the outcome of litigation challenging it.
Los Angeles Times Supreme Court reporter David G. Savage wrote, “While the court’s action sets no precedent, it sends a signal that the justices are not ready to quickly approve laws that discriminate against transgender people.”
The decision marks the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on matters involving transgender youth sports. West Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey pledged to keep defending the underlying statute.
“This is a procedural setback, but we remain confident that when this case is ultimately determined on the merits, we will prevail,” he said in a statement.
Enforcing the ban against the 12-year-old girl would have prevented her from participating in the girls’ cross-country and track teams at her middle school in Bridgeport, W.Va.
A federal judge ruled in 2021 that “not one child has been or is likely to be harmed” by her participation in those sports leagues, issuing a preliminary injunction to halt enforcement of the Save Women’s Sports Act.
He subsequently reversed course, finding the statute to be lawful, along with its enforcement against the 12-year-old student athlete.
Then, the ACLU appealed on her behalf and last month, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again blocked West Virginia from enforcing the law.
Also in March, a proposed federal ban on trans students’ participation in school sports teams consistent with their gender identities was marked up by the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee.
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