A pair of trans athlete cases are up for arguments at SCOTUS Tuesday morning.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/the-transgender-athlete-cases-an-explainer/
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/the-transgender-athlete-cases-an-explainer/
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Who are the challengers in the cases?
There are two challengers both transgender women in two separate cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., which will be argued on the same day, Tuesday, Jan. 13. One challenger is Lindsay Hecox, now 24 years old, who filed this lawsuit when seeking to try out for the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox did not make the NCAA teams at BSU but competes at the club level.
The other challenger is B.P.J., a 15-year-old high school student who has publicly identified as female since the third grade. B.P.J. takes medicine to stave off the onset of male puberty and has also begun to receive hormone therapy with estrogen. B.P.J's mother, Heather Jackson, went to court on her child's behalf when she learned that the West Virginia law would bar B.P.J. from participating on the girls' middle school sports teams
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What arguments do the challengers make in the Supreme Court?
Hecox first urges the court not to decide her case at all (more on that below). But if it doesn't do that, she says, the justices should leave the district court's order barring enforcement of the law in place and send it back so that the state can argue over facts that it had not previously asserted such as the differences between men and women "that necessitate separate sports teams." The Supreme Court, Hecox argues, should not consider those facts in the first instance.
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B.P.J. (who is represented by many of the same lawyers who represent Hecox) first urges, like Hecox, the justices not to engage with the states' invocation of any advantages that transgender athletes may have, arguing that they should not consider claims and evidence that were not before the lower courts in her case.
B.P.J.'s arguments on the merits generally focus on the law as it applies to her, rather than to transgender athletes more broadly. B.P.J. begins with the text of Title IX, which bars discrimination against a "person" "on the basis of sex." Pointing to the court's decision in Bostock, B.P.J. contends that "treating a student differently because they are transgender inherently entails differential treatment of a 'person' 'on the basis of sex.'" Indeed, B.P.J. suggests, because she has lived as a girl for seven years, barring her from competing on the girls' sports teams effectively prohibits her from competing on any sports teams.
