(Washington) The predominantly conservative US Supreme Court appeared Tuesday willing to let states exclude transgender girls or women from school and college women’s sports competitions, an explosive issue in the United States.
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After promising to put an end to the “transgender delirium”, Donald Trump signed a decree upon his inauguration on January 20, 2025 according to which his administration no longer recognized that the existence of “two sexes, male and female”, defined at birth.
The Republican president also signed an executive order in February authorizing federal agencies to cut funding to schools allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s championships.
At issue Tuesday before the nine judges of the Supreme Court: laws adopted by Idaho and West Virginia, conservative states which, like more than half of American states, prohibit transgender women from participating in women’s competitions.
In Idaho, a pioneer of this type of legislation in the United States, a transgender student at Boise State University, Lindsay Hecox, challenged its exclusion from sporting events.
A federal appeals court ruled in his favor, finding that the law violated a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution on “equal protection” of citizens.
In West Virginia, another federal appeals court found that a transgender minor had suffered discrimination based on sex, prohibited by American law.
Supported by the Trump administration, the two states say they simply want to uphold sporting fairness and safety. They claim that transgender athletes necessarily have a physical advantage over their opponents and that this increases their risk of injury.
“Ultimately, it is gender that counts in sporting terms. This is the fairest and safest way to define sports teams,” argued Idaho Representative Alan Hurst.
“Disproportionate reaction”
A postulate contested by Kathleen Hartnett, Lindsay Hecox’s lawyer, according to which the testosterone reduction treatments taken by her client cancel out her possible physiological advantage at birth.
“Is this law a rational response to a problem, or is it actually a disproportionate response to the presumption that transgender women would necessarily be great athletes, when that is not the case?” “, asked the lawyer.
But one of the six conservative judges, Brett Kavanaugh, objected to the decision taken by several American sports authorities in the wake of Donald Trump’s decree in February.
The participation of transgender athletes in women’s competitions could “undermine or cancel the tremendous success” represented by the development of women’s sports in the United States over the past half century, he worried.
“I hate the idea of a kid who plays sports being prevented from doing so. I hate it, but we have kind of a zero-sum game on a lot of teams, and if a transgender girl gets picked on the team, someone else is going to be cut,” he told Joshua Block, the West Virginia minor’s attorney.
The latter “signed up for sports at school because she was an 11-year-old girl entering a new college and wanted to meet people, make new friends and be part of a team,” argued Joshua Block.
A sign of the impact of this issue in American society, supporters of both camps demonstrated in front of the Supreme Court during the more than three hours of debate.
“It’s about much more than sport. It’s about belonging to a community and being ourselves in the world today,” Rebekah Bruesehoff, 19, a transgender student who played field hockey in high school, who came specially from New Hampshire, told AFP.
The decision of the nine judges is expected by the end of the annual session of the Supreme Court at the end of June.
In June, the Court allowed Tennessee (south) to prohibit transgender minors from accessing transition treatment, considering that the law adopted in this matter by this state was not discriminatory in nature.
