‘No real choice at all’: Federal appeals court says sports ban on 13-year-old transgender girl violated her civil rights

Becky Pepper Jackson, an 12-year-old trans girl, won a watershed SCOTUS ruling allowing her to play in school sports.

West Virginia kid Becky Pepper Jackson, an 12-year-old trans girl, previously won a watershed Supreme Court ruling allowing her to play in school sports. (Photo by Raymond Thompson Jr.)

A federal appeals court has ruled 2-1 that a ban in West Virginia affecting one young transgender athlete’s ability to compete on the girls track and field teams at her public school violates federal civil rights laws prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

The ruling is a boon in a long legal battle for Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old West Virginia resident who began identifying as female five years ago, took medication to block testosterone and obtained official documentation, including a birth certificate declaring her as female. As Law&Crime previously reported, the committed young athlete became the first transgender child to receive the Supreme Court’s blessing — albeit temporarily — to compete on her West Virginia middle school’s track team when the high court’s “shadow docket” issued a 7-2 decision last April amid a fight over a West Virginia law that relegated “interscholastic athletic events” to “single sex participation” only.

U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, a Joe Biden appointee, said that the “sole purpose” of the law — known as the Save Women’s Sports Act — was to stop transgender girls from playing on girls teams. Proponents said it was necessary to stop unfair competitive athletic advantages; opponents argued it was purely discriminatory.

But for the Fourth Circuit, the question was whether that West Virginia law could be applied specifically to a transgender girl who had taken puberty-blocking medication for years and otherwise formally identified as a girl and is recognized medically as a girl. Upon review, Heytens wrote this week, the court found the law could not apply to Pepper-Jackson.

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