The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on sex reassignment surgery for minors on Wednesday. It is a decision that could play a part in shaping the future of girls’ sports and prevention of biological males from competing against female athletes for generations to come.
The case, known as US v. Skrmetti, will focus on a law that was signed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee in 2023. The law, SB 1, bans hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors in the state and imposes civil penalties for doctors who violate the prohibitions.
The law is aimed to prevent such access to “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” or treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
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These medications and procedures, when administered to minors, have created a pathway for biological males to compete in girls’ youth sports teams across the country.
Tennessee lawmakers have advised minors to “appreciate their sex, particularly as they undergo puberty.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for the Biden administration and transgender youth in Tennessee will press the justices to declare the 2023 law unconstitutional. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who is arguing on behalf of the families, will be the first openly transgender lawyer to present a case before the Supreme Court.
Tennessee is one of 23 states that has such a law in place to prevent these treatments from being available to minors. Tennessee is also one of 23 states that has a law in place to restrict or prevent trans athletes in girls’ sports, but that issue is not being contested on Wednesday.
Lee signed the state’s trans athletes ban in April 2022, and it went into effect in July of that year. However, even states that have put those laws in place have seen federal judges enable trans athletes in those states to compete against and share locker rooms with girls anyway.
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Judges Landya McCafferty of New Hampshire and M. Hannah Lauck of Virginia, both of whom were appointed during the Obama administration, each issued rulings this year that enabled biological males to play on high school girls’ soccer and tennis teams. McCafferty issued an order that allowed two transgender athletes to compete in New Hampshire, while Lauck ruled that an 11-year-old transgender tennis player was allowed to compete against girls the same age in Virginia.
In California, a state with laws in place to protect trans athletes in girls’ sports, multiple high schools have been embroiled in scandals involving trans athletes in girls’ teams and the female athletes not accepting them.
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A recent lawsuit by female athletes at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, has alleged that their “Save Girls Sports” T-shirts were likened to a swastika by school officials. The plaintiffs had worn the shirts after a transgender athlete, who had not consistently attended practices or met key varsity eligibility requirements, was placed on the varsity team, displacing one of the girls from her spot, the complaint alleged.
A girls’ cross country runner at the school, Rylee Morrow, gave an impassioned plea at a school board meeting on Nov. 21, when she lambasted her school and said the way things have been handled makes her feel “unsafe.”
“The whole LGBTQ is shoved down our throats!” Morrow cried.
“It is not OK that I have to be in position, and I have to see a male in booty shorts, and having to see that around me. As a 16-year-old girl, I don’t see that as a safe environment,” Morrow said. “Going into a locker room and seeing males in there, I don’t find that safe, I don’t find going to the bathroom safe when there’s guys in there. It’s not okay. I’m a 16-year-old girl!”
In Washington, another state with laws to protect trans inclusion, the Central Valley School Board voted to send a letter to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, asking it to change its policies that have allowed trans athletes to compete against girls.
One of the women who advocated for it, an unidentified current cross country runner, shared her experience of having to compete against one of those athletes during the hearing.
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“When I ran cross country for Greenacres Middle School, a boy who was biologically male but identified as female competed on the girls’ team,” she said. “While I respect everyone’s right to participate in sports, the situation made me question the fairness of competing of someone who had the physical advantage associated with male biology.”
Most policies that allow trans athletes to compete have clauses in place that require those athletes to have undergone the types of treatments and medications that Tennessee seeks to ban for minors. If those are unavailable to minors, the instances of trans athletes competing on those teams would likely drop significantly, at least at the youth level.
The Supreme Court’s decision will set a historical precedent while determining the course of many lives and athletic careers.
In August, the court ruled 5-4 in denying the Biden administration an emergency request to enforce portions of a new rule that includes protection from discrimination for transgender students under Title IX.
The request would have permitted biological men in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and dorms in 10 states where there are state-level and local-level rules in place to prevent it.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was the only conservative justice to dissent in that decision.
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