Trans teen has been fighting her state’s anti-trans sports ban since age 11 & she’s not backing down

A federal appeals court appeared skeptical of a West Virginia law banning transgender girls from competing on middle school, high school, and college sports teams that align with their gender identity.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case of 13-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, who is seeking to overturn the state’s “Save Women’s Sports Act” so that she can continue to compete on her school’s girls’ cross-country team.

Related:

11-year-old trans girl sues her state because they’re banning her from cross-country

Gov. Jim Justice said he couldn’t think of any “transgender-type kids” in his state when he signed the sports ban. Now one of them is suing.

The law was passed in 2021, one of 23 state laws passed in recent years banning or severely restricting transgender women and girls’ participation in school sports. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) signed it into law in April of that year. A month later, when Pepper-Jackson was just 11 years old, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of her and her family against the West Virginia Department of Education arguing that the law violates both the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination in education on the basis of sex, which the Biden administration has said includes anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.

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Pepper-Jackson won an initial temporary injunction allowing her to run with her classmates, but a judge in the Southern District of West Virginia upheld the law in January. The ACLU appealed that decision, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals granted another temporary injunction in February. The state asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the injunction, but in April it declined to intervene while the case plays out.

On Friday, ACLU attorney Joshua Block, who is representing Pepper-Jackson, argued that the West Virginia law “goes out of its way to select criteria that do not create athletic advantage but do a perfect job of accomplishing the function of excluding transgender students based on their transgender status.” As NBC News reported, Block argued that the law’s criteria for banning trans girls from participating in girls’ sports have more to do with simply being transgender than they do with actual athletic performance. He said that Pepper-Jackson has received puberty-blocking medication and has not gone through testosterone-driven puberty.

West Virginia Solicitor General Lindsay See argued that “Biological sex dictates physical characteristics that are indisputably relevant to athletics” regardless of whether a trans girl has gone through testosterone-driven puberty, according to Reuters. She urged the court to uphold the Southern District of West Virginia’s January decision to uphold the law.

According to Reuters, Judges Pamela Harris and Toby Heytens both seemed skeptical of the law. The state, Heytens said, seemed to be arguing that “no cisgender girl should ever have to suffer the indignity of finishing behind any transgender girl.”

Judge G. Steven Agee, however, reportedly seemed less convinced. A George W. Bush appointee, he previously dissented in the court’s decision granting a temporary preliminary injunction against the law. Agee said on Friday that in this case, the Fourth Circuit was “probably only a waystation on the way to the Supreme Court.”

The ACLU’s Block said over the weekend that he expects the court to release its decision in Pepper-Jackson’s case in the next three to six months. As NBC News notes, an appeal is likely, whatever the court decides, potentially setting up the next stage of the battle before the Supreme Court.