Becky Pepper Jackson
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an effort by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey to force a middle school to kick a 12-year-old trans girl off the school track team on which she has been competing for the past several seasons.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of West Virginia and Lambda Legal, which filed suit in May 2021 defending Becky Pepper Jackson’s right to compete, issued the following statement: “We are grateful that the Supreme Court today acknowledged that there was no emergency and that Becky should be allowed to continue to participate with her teammates on her middle school track team, which she has been doing without incident for three going on four seasons, as our challenge to West Virginia’s onerous trans youth sports ban makes its way through the courts.
“This was a baseless and cruel effort to keep Becky from where she belongs–playing alongside her peers as a teammate and as a friend.”
The lawsuit was filed in the wake of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signing into law, in April 2021, HB 3293, which bars transgender student athletes from competing in gendered school sports according to their actual gender identity rather than perceived gender at birth. The tw ACLU agencies and Lambda Legal filed suit on Jackson’s behalf the following month.
A trial court ruled to uphold the ban, and Morrissey had insisted that Jackson be removed from her team as that ruling moves through the legal system.
In February of this year, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit blocked the state’s effort to remove Jackson from the team, prompting Morrissey to, on March 9, file an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court and have Jackson removed from the team.
Today’s ruling from SCOTUS came on a 7-2 vote. Those voting to allow the state to kick the child off her track team were Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
— Tammye Nash