Supreme Court to review Idaho law barring trans athletes from women’s sports

BOISE – The U.S. Supreme Court will review an Idaho case on whether transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.

Attorney General Raúl Labrador in late June asked the court to review the case, arguing that it raised “vital constitutional questions about sex-based classifications and women’s athletic opportunities,” according to a June 25 news release from his office.

“While we’ve been fighting for fair and equal athletic competition, activists have been pushing an agenda that would ultimately sideline women and girls in their own sports,” Labrador said in the release.

Idaho lawmakers in 2020 passed a law, dubbed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, that banned transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports. Under the law, a girls or women’s team would not be open to students who were born as male, even if they identify as female. If there is a dispute over a student’s sex, her health care provider would be required to verify her biological sex, based on the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup or normal testosterone levels. The law does not apply to transgender students wanting to participate in boys or men’s sports.

Soon after Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law, Lindsay Hecox, a transgender Boise State University student, sued the state, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

A district judge found that the state’s law was likely unconstitutional after attorneys argued that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection, due process and search and seizure clauses, as well as Title IX, the 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in education.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision with an injunction that prevented the law from taking effect.

Ninth Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in her opinion that the district judge ruled correctly because the act targeted only female students, the Statesman previously reported.

The law subjected these students to “an intrusive sex verification process” if anyone disputed their gender and banned them from sports. Idaho also failed to show that the law improved gender equality, Wardlaw wrote.

That injunction was “a clear indicator that the ban causes real harm,” said Rebecca De Leon, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, which brought Hecox’s lawsuit. “We are confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree with federal court rulings that this ban is unconstitutional.”

Labrador argued that urgent questions remain unanswered in the case, including how biological sex should be defined in cases related to the Constitution’s equal protection clause, according to the June 25 release.

A brief he submitted to the Supreme Court urged it to grant immediate review of Idaho’s law rather than sending the case back to a lower court.

Nearly 30 states have enacted laws similar to Idaho’s, but women and girls “continue losing medals, podium spots, and athletic opportunities in jurisdictions where courts have blocked these protections,” Labrador’s release said.

Damon Sidur, a spokesperson for Labrador’s office, shared examples of two Idaho State University cross country runners who lost to a trans woman, as well as a database of female athletes who were “displaced by males in women’s sporting events.” The database shows the athletes’ rankings in events but does not provide additional context for, or explanation of, each case.

In December , the NCAA’s president testified that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender college student-athletes among 510,000 total athletes.

“Idaho’s elected officials, backed by well-funded national groups, are creating a false sense of fear and anger toward a small and vulnerable portion of the population,” De Leon said Thursday.

Little, one of the petitioners on appeal in the lawsuit, said in a Thursday release that he was “confident Idaho’s common-sense laws to defend women’s sports will prevail” under the Supreme Court’s review.

Lawrence Wasden, the state’s previous attorney general, warned Republican lawmakers in 2020 that the state’s new law was on shaky legal ground, the Statesman previously reported.

The Supreme Court has also taken up a transgender athlete ban in West Virginia.