Cases of transgender people having trouble competing continue to occur in the United States. On this occasion, the Supreme Court has ruled that a 12-year-old transgender girl can compete on the girls’ teams track record at your high school while your appeal progresses.
According to collect The New York Timesthe judges issued a temporary order so you can continue competing. This new order suspends the injunction of an appeal court. Two judges issued their own opinion and indicated that states have the right to enact laws “that restrict participation in sports of women or girls based on genes or on physiological or anatomical characteristics”.
The case began in 2021 after the application of a law in the state of West Virginia that prohibited boys from competing on the public school girls’ teams. In this law, biological sex was distinguished and defined as “the physical form of an individual as a man or woman based solely on reproductive biology and genetics of the individual at birth.
Becky Pepper-Jackson was an 11-year-old girl entering the sixth grade at the time. It was then that the family’s lawyers filed a lawsuit alleging that she discriminated against transgender girls. Becky’s coaches and teammates they supported the young and the girls from other teams did not object either.
The US District Court judge in Charleston initially sided with Becky and entered a preliminary injunction allowing her to compete for more than a year and a half. Despite that initial decision, the judge ended up ruling against, in what he considered “a novel and difficult case,” but that “the state law did not violate the Constitution or federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education.”
The judge stated that “no child has been or may be harmed for the continuous participation of BPJ in the cross-country and athletics teams of his institute”. friends and try your best.
After this decision of the Supreme Court, Becky will be able to compete again until there is a final ruling on her appeal.