What Will the Justices Decide?

 Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases to determine of what will happen with males playing female sports. The two cases, one from Idaho and one from West Virginia, are about state laws that ban males from playing on female sports teams.

Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal reported, “Chief Justice John Roberts, seen as a swing vote in the case, hinted that he would side with the states. He said allowing a male identifying as a female to compete in women’s sports could make federal Title IX statutes difficult to enforce.” 

“How we approach the situation of looking at it not as boys versus girls, but whether or not there should be an exception,” Roberts said during questioning. “If we adopted that, that would have to apply across the board and not simply to the area of athletics.”

Lindsay Hecox, a self-identified “transgender” athlete who wanted to be on the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, sued the state. The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals imposed an injunction.

In the West Virginia case, the plaintiff, Becky Pepper-Jackson wanted to compete on the middle school girls’ cross-country team. The 4^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act violates Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and school athletics. The high court heard the cases back-to-back on Tuesday.

The problem facing the justices is to determine how to be fair to normal or cisgender girls and women and honor the Title IX protections, while also not stigmatizing men and boys who think that they are a woman or a girl. The decision will come out sometime between now and the end of June or early July.