U.S. Supreme Court invited into debate over transgender athletes
The Supreme Court has so far avoided getting into legal battles over the rights of transgender people.
The very conservative United States Supreme Court was asked on Friday to intervene in the case of a transgender girl who wants to join the women's running team from his college.
This is the first time the High Court has been called upon to rule on the place of transgender athletes in women's sport, a highly political debate raging across the United States.
Specifically, the case concerns a law passed in 2021 by West Virginia which, like several other conservative states, prohibits students defined as male on the basis of their biology from the birth of joining women's competitions.
As soon as it was passed, the law was challenged in court by Becky Pepper-Jackson, an 11-year-old transgender girl who wanted to be on her school's cross-country team.
After several twists and turns, a federal appeals court decided on February 22 to freeze the law pending a review of the merits of the case.
< p class="e-p">West Virginia then turned urgently to the Supreme Court to ask it to lift this blockage, so that its law could apply as long as the procedure continues.
“In recent years, biological males who identify as female have increasingly beaten biological females in female competitions.
— Becky Pepper-Jackson, excerpt from her appeal
Transgender girl asks court to protect fairness in women's sport.
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West Virginia talks about elite athletic competitions, which has nothing to do with Becky Pepper-Jackson's case, countered several associations that support her – including the powerful ACLU (American Union for civil liberties) – in a statement.
When the teenager was able to participate in women's races, she often finished in the last, but her mother had never seen her so happy, had pointed out his lawyers in a court document.
The Supreme Court is not called upon to rule on the merits at this stage and may simply uphold or reverse the court's decision. x27;appeal without saying more.
So far, she has avoided getting involved in legal battles over transgender rights, with the exception of #x27;a decision on discrimination at work: in 2020, it had found wrong a funeral company which had dismissed a transgender employee after her transition.
