Supreme Court allows transgender boy to run for women's team in West Virginia

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a 12-year-old transgender girl will be allowed to remain and compete on her West Virginia high school's girls' high school track and field team while a lawsuit over her ban moves forward.

The court decided to side with the young trans woman by refusing to intervene in the legal battle over a law that prevents transgender students from competing on sports teams that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, and allow him to remain on the athletic team while the lawsuit proceeds.

According to a ban passed in 2021, students in public schools and universities must participate in sports teams that correspond to their birth sex. However, shortly after the law went into effect the family of a transgender student filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the state's ban violates the Constitution and federal law.

At first Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, of the Federal District Court in Charleston, sided with Becky Pepper-Jackson and even issued a preliminary injunction allowing her to compete for more than a year and a half while the case progressed. But then the judge ended up up upholding the state's .

"While some women may outperform some men, it is generally accepted that, on average, men outperform women athletically because of inherent physical differences between the sexes. This is not an exaggerated generalization, but a general principle that realistically reflects the average physical differences between the sexes," the ruling stated.

Later, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond issued an order without further explanation, staying the court's ruling and allowing Becky to continue competing, but the state appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

"Federal courts should not prohibit the application of the law in question without explanation," Justice Samuel Alito said.

Officials asked the court to continue the prohibition law while the case moved forward in the lower courts. However, the Supreme Court's solution was to reject the state's request to temporarily reactivate the ban while the underlying litigation continues.