Becky Pepper-Jackson, the trans girl who challenged West Virginia’s sports ban, always figured her case was likely a long shot.
“Someone has to do this because this is just a terrible thing,” Pepper-Jackson told CNN in an interview with her family and attorneys before the oral arguments in the case. “I know that I can handle it and it’s never crossed my mind to stop, because I know I’m doing it for everybody.”
Pepper-Jackson, a high school sophomore when the case was argued before the Supreme Court, has for years enjoyed competing in track — shot put, specifically. Speaking with CNN, she flashed a smile when asked to describe the basic technique of the shot put.
“It’s just throwing something that’s heavy,” she said. “Far.”
That description, she knew, could also apply to her blockbuster legal case.
Pepper-Jackson began transitioning socially in the third grade and, by the end of the sixth grade, she was taking hormone therapy. Given those treatments, her attorneys stress, she has “never experienced the effects of testosterone on her body” and doesn’t have the inherent biological advantages states like West Virginia are attempting to regulate.
While competitive and proud of her personal records, Pepper-Jackson didn’t come across as a teen driven to win her at weekend track meets at any cost. She joked that she found her way to shot put and discus only because she “sucked at running.”
She likes to play sports, she said, because of her friends and “life skills that you won’t learn anywhere else.”
