Katie BarnesJan 12, 2026, 06:46 AM ETCloseKatie Barnes is a writer/reporter for ESPN.com. Follow them on Twitter at Katie_Barnes3.Follow on X
When and how did the legal landscape change regarding transgender athlete participation?
Which federal laws and constitutional questions will be in play?
What is Title IX and how does it apply to transgender people?
What is the equal protection clause and how does it apply to transgender people?
What cases provide context and insight into how the Supreme Court will consider the arguments?
How can the public follow the Supreme Court arguments?
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases pertaining to transgender athletes on Tuesday: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. The cases bring the national debate over whether transgender girls and women should be eligible to compete in girls’ and women’s sports to the country’s highest court.
The athletes will not testify during Tuesday’s oral arguments. Their lawyers will present their cases to the court on their behalf. Likewise, attorneys for Little and West Virginia will represent their side of the debate.
Idaho state legislator Barbara Ehardt said she was inspired to write HB 500 after two transgender athletes won high school track and field state titles in Connecticut in 2018.
“It’s not just a bill that I sponsored, the entire idea was mine, and that’s why it took two years to finally come to pass,” Ehardt said. “And then each year to see so many states take it up and pass it … it has been a unique experience, and it’s been an incredibly gratifying one.”
It’s not uncommon for the court to hear multiple cases that present similar, if not the same, legal questions, especially on a controversial or large issue.
One possible issue that could arise on Tuesday is that Hecox asked the Supreme Court not to decide her case at all. She is no longer participating in sports in Idaho and therefore contends her case is “moot.” Idaho contends the case is not moot because the state and Boise State University still have an interest in enforcing HB 500.
Title IX was passed by Congress in 1972 and bars sex-based discrimination in schools receiving federal funds, including in school-sponsored programs and activities. It is largely credited with creating and expanding girls’ and women’s sports programs, but it applies to schools broadly. The law is 37 words, but in 1975, Congress approved regulations for Title IX’s application. Enforcement power belongs to the Department of Education.
B.P.J. also argues that Title IX protects transgender students, though the case focuses on sports and not bathrooms. B.P.J. argues that West Virginia’s law violates Title IX because the law is a categorical ban that unfairly prohibits transgender girls and women who don’t have the physiological advantages associated with testosterone-driven puberty to be eligible for girls’ and women’s sports.
West Virginia counters with the argument that Title IX was enacted to provide equal opportunities and ensure fair competition for girls and women, as determined by birth sex, and gender identity should have nothing to do with it.
The equal protection clause — part of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868 — prohibits states from creating laws that violate the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” and also cannot deny someone the “equal protection of the laws.”
Idaho rejects that argument. “Nothing in the Equal Protection Clause requires Idaho to treat males who identify as women as if they were female, in sports or elsewhere,” the state argues.
Additionally, Hecox argues that the Supreme Court needs to apply heightened scrutiny to HB 500 because it discriminates against a group of people. Heightened scrutiny requires states to prove that the government has a “substantial and clearly related interest” in creating a law that discriminates. Heightened scrutiny is a higher bar for states to clear.
Idaho argues against heightened scrutiny because “a sex classification does not become a transgender-status classification simply by failing to make exceptions based on gender identity.”
In other words, the Bostock ruling does not automatically apply to Title IX, even though both laws bar sex-based discrimination.
But in his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito specifically pointed to transgender athletes as a concern. “The effect of the Court’s reasoning may be to force young women to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage,” Alito wrote, “including students who have the size and strength of a male but identify as female and students who are taking male hormones in order to transition from female to male.”
Since Bostock, the composition of the court has changed, and it’s unclear how relevant that vote will be to these proceedings. Skrmetti, which was a 6-3 decision by the current justices, allowed a gender-affirming health care ban for minors to stand.
Both proponents and opponents of restrictions on transgender women and girls in sports see the legislation as a gateway to legislation and policy affecting transgender people in other areas of life.
Ehardt, who sponsored Idaho’s HB 500, also was the floor sponsor for a bill during Idaho’s 2025 legislative session that limits access to single-sex facilities such as bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons and residence halls at public universities to those who are assigned that sex at birth. Gov. Little signed Ehardt’s bill into law on April 1.
“I also knew, and said so at the time, that it would be the sports issue that would open it up for all the other issues,” Ehardt said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents both Hecox and Pepper-Jackson, sees that connection as well. The organization has been involved in multiple legal challenges to laws affecting transgender athletes and young people.
“Idaho wants to use this case as a jumping-off point for establishing a really broad principle that the government can discriminate against transgender people in all contexts,” Block said. “And that it should be treated as presumptively constitutional.”
Supreme Court arguments are not streamed or broadcast on TV. The Supreme Court website provides live audio starting at 10 a.m. ET and releases transcripts at the end of the day. The court will hear Little v. Hecox in the morning session. West Virginia v. B.P.J. is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ESPN will provide live updates from inside and outside the Supreme Court throughout the day,
Little v. Hecox is a dispute over the first state law, Idaho’s HB 500, that barred transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s school and college sports. Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law in March 2020, and Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman, challenged it weeks later because she wanted to try out for Boise State’s women’s track and cross country teams. A U.S. district court in Idaho granted Hecox an injunction, and she tried out for the Broncos’ cross country team, but she did not make it. Hecox instead participated in women’s club soccer and running, which are also affected by HB 500. After a series of appeals by the state, the Supreme Court agreed last July to hear the case. Hecox’s attorneys argue, in part, that the Idaho law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Similarly, West Virginia v. B.P.J. puts West Virginia’s HB 3293, one of 27 state laws that restrict transgender girls and women from sports, in front of the Supreme Court. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old transgender girl, was entering middle school when the law passed in April 2021. Pepper-Jackson wanted to compete on her school’s sports teams, but her school principal told the family the state law prevented her participation. Pepper-Jackson and her family challenged West Virginia’s law the summer before she began middle school, and she has since been allowed to participate in cross country and track and field. Pepper-Jackson’s attorneys argue, in part, that her right to compete on the girls’ teams is guaranteed by Title IX because her gender identity matches the category and she has undergone an estrogen-driven puberty. West Virginia argues, in part, that her participation on girls’ teams violates Title IX because her birth sex is not female. Last July, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
In the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 5, 2025, that said schools and states that allow transgender girls and women to participate in girls’ and women’s school sports are in violation of Title IX and risk federal funding. That led the NCAA to change its policy to align with the executive order. Additionally, United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland and president and chair Gene Sykes directed national governing bodies to update their transgender policies to “comply with federal expectations.” Many organizations under the USOPC have implemented new policies, and some impact youth sports opportunities.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on the question of how Title IX applies to transgender students. But in June of 2021, the court declined to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy and student at Gloucester High School in Virginia. Grimm sued his school system because he was not allowed to continue to use the boys’ bathroom after school officials originally allowed him to do so. The Fourth Circuit, the same circuit that heard Pepper-Jackson’s case, ruled in Grimm’s favor twice. In declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court allowed the Fourth Circuit’s ruling to stand.
The Supreme Court recently rejected heightened scrutiny in a different case involving transgender youth. The court allowed a Tennessee law barring access to gender-affirming care for minors to stand in its June 2025 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti. In that case, the court rejected the argument that the law should be subjected to heightened scrutiny, ruling that it did not “classify on any bases that warrant heightened review.” Although those challenging laws barring access to gender-affirming care for minors argued that they discriminated against transgender people, the Supreme Court held that the laws regulated age and medical purpose, and therefore did not require heightened scrutiny. The impact of the decision was the court sidestepped one of the central tensions in both Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.: Is transgender identity a classification protected by the equal protection clause?