On Jan. 13, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. Both cases explore the similar legal question of whether excluding transgender athletes from state-sponsored sports violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The rulings could impact the future of transgender rights and the legality of sex-based classification.

The West Virginia case concerns Becky Pepper-Jackson’s (B.P.J.) challenge to a state law, House Bill 3293. When she was eleven, Pepper-Jackson was barred from joining her middle school’s cross-county team.

“I play for my school for the same reason other kids on my track team do,” Pepper-Jackson said in a press release from the ACLU. “But in 2021, politicians in my state passed a law banning me—the only transgender student athlete in the entire state—from playing as who I really am. This is unfair to me and every transgender kid who just wants the freedom to be themselves.”

House Bill 3293 barred transgender athletes from playing scholastic sports in the gender category that they identify with. With the aid of the ACLU and Lambda Legal, Pepper-Jackson and her mother sued the state, claiming that the bill violated the Constitution and Title IX. She won preliminary injunctive relief, allowing her to compete on her school’s girls’ cross country and track and field teams.

Similarly, in 2020, transgender Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox challenged Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The law banned her from trying out for the university’s women’s cross country team, despite lowered testosterone levels from hormone replacement therapy.

Oral arguments for the two cases lasted three hours. Lawyers representing all four parties fielded questions about sex-based classification, scientific research and transgender discrimination. Both liberal- and conservative-leaning justices raised concerns about the lack of precedent regarding Equal Protection challenges brought forth by transgender individuals.

“So, that’s one of the fundamental problems with laws like this, these sweeping bans, is that they refuse to look at the individual,” Pepper-Jackson’s attorney Joshua Block, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties’ Union’s (ACLU) LGBTQ & HIV Project said. “The whole point of our civil rights laws and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause is that people should be recognized as individuals and not just part of amorphous groups.”

Advocates for the states argued differently. Hashim M. Mooppan, an appellate attorney supporting the state of Idaho, called Hecox’s case “the world’s easiest as-applied claim to reject.” Because transgender individuals comprise a “fraction of a percent,” Mooppan argued, their exclusion from sports teams on the basis of sex does not rise to the legal standard of discrimination.

Since 2020, 27 additional states have created similar bans regarding transgender women in sports, including Ohio. Other areas of transgender rights have come under recent fire, as well. In 2025, Skrmetti v. The United States saw the Supreme Court uphold a Tennessee ban against gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender minors.

When asked about her perspective on the recent cases, trans-femme Case Western Reserve University student Abby attributed the current actions barring transgender people to fear.

“The argument is just predicated on fear, because [they] actually don’t really give a shit about women’s sports,” she said. “It’s like, well, here’s this easy minority to hate on right now. And fear gets me elected and I don’t have any morals or spine … Why not?”