Supreme Court justices appeared ready to uphold Idaho and West Virginia transgender sports bans during oral arguments with conservatives backing state restrictions.
The Supreme Court struggled for consensus Tuesday as it publicly debated state bans on transgender female students from competing in women’s and girls’ scholastic sports.
Both sides repeatedly invoked contrasting versions of «fairness» and «equal opportunity» before the justices during a more than three-hour oral argument session in the courtroom.
Idaho and West Virginia separately defended their laws that limit participation for transgender females who were designated male at birth in both public school and college athletics.
They are among almost 30 states who say their restrictions are a matter of ensuring a level playing field and student safety.
But lawyers for a high school sophomore and a college senior counter that those prohibitions are clearly discriminatory and that the issues should be about equality and dignity for every student, free from politics and misinformation.
The high court is examining whether the laws violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause and the landmark federal law Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
A majority of the court — at least five of the six conservatives — appeared ready to back the state restrictions in some form. Only Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed open to some of the arguments by the student plaintiffs.
In arguments, much of the discussion came down to whether the transgender student population was large enough to give them an opportunity to defend their rights as a protected class.
With an estimated 2.8 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said their rights should be respected, even if they represent a relatively small percentage of the population.
«The numbers don’t talk about the human beings», Sotomayor said.
«I’m struggling to understand how you can say that this law doesn’t classify on the basis of transgender status», said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. «The law expressly aims to ensure that transgender women can’t play on women’s sports teams. So, why is that not a classification on the basis of transgender status?»
But other members of the court suggested just the opposite.
«The question here is whether a sex-based classification is necessarily a transgender classification», said Chief Justice John Roberts, skeptical of the position by lawyers for the student plaintiffs.
Roberts added that allowing exceptions for a relatively small subset of individuals could have larger implications.
