Supreme Court Blocks West Virginia's Transgender Athlete Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied West Virginia's request to enforce a state law banning transgender athletes from female sports teams at public schools. The law, passed in 2021, designates sports teams at public schools according to "biological sex" and bars male students from female athletic teams "based solely on the individual's reproductive biology and genetics at birth." The decision was made in a challenge brought by a 12-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, who argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.