Idaho, West Virginia ask Supreme Court to uphold their transgender sports bans

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The attorneys general of Idaho and West Virginia asked the Supreme Court on July 11 to uphold their states' laws requiring student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond to their biological sex rather than their gender identity.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador filed a petition with the high court asking it to uphold those laws in their states, both of which were previously blocked by lower courts.

"We think it's really a very critical issue for the Supreme Court to take up now," Morrisey told reporters in July 10 comments about the cert petition they were filing with the court. "And we feel that the vehicles that West Virginia and Idaho presented collectively represent a critical opportunity for the court to step in and to resolve this."

There is no clear data on how many athletes who identify as transgender compete on teams opposite their biological sex in the U.S., as many sports associations do not track those numbers. A 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found that there are approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, with nearly half of that population between the ages of 13 and 24.

But Labrador told reporters that "it's an issue that needs to be addressed soon."

"It's causing confusion and chaos all throughout the United States in high school sports, university sports," he said, arguing that Title IX's intention was to protect women's equality and equal opportunity in athletics. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational program -- including college athletics -- that is federally funded, either directly or indirectly.

"I think that tells you everything you need to know about the fairness of this issue," Labrador added.

Morrisey argued that conflicting information from the courts means that "25 state laws on these issues are now in doubt."

"And that doubt itself does great damage to fair, common sense, safe, athletic competition," he said.

It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will respond to the cert petition, but it would likely make that known in the fall, when its next term begins.

Before the end of its term, the Supreme Court in June agreed to hear a challenge to a Tennessee state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender, the high court's first major step toward weighing in on the controversial issue.

The case, which the court is expected to hear in the fall, concerns the Biden administration's challenge to a law in Tennessee restricting gender transition treatments including puberty blockers for minors.

At least 25 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender reassignment surgery or hormonal treatments for minors, although not all of those bans are currently in effect amid legal challenges, according to data from the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ policy group.

Supporters of prohibitions on gender transition surgeries or hormones for minors who identify as transgender say such efforts will prevent them from making irreversible decisions as children that they may later come to regret as adults. Critics of such bans argue that preventing those interventions could cause other harm to minors, such as mental health issues or physical self-harm.

In guidance on health care policy and practices released in March 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine opposed interventions that "involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient's body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof."

"Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person," the document states.