While the transgender athletes who challenged the Idaho and West Virginia laws are aiming for a major victory at the Supreme Court, their winning streak in lower courts is ultimately what landed their cases before the conservative-majority high court.
In both disputes, a series of favorable rulings from trial-level judges and federal appeals courts concluded that the state bans violated the civil rights of Lindsay Hecox and Becky Pepper-Jackson, who challenged the Idaho and West Virginia laws, respectively.
In the first judicial rebuke of Idaho’s law, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term said it was likely unconstitutional and blocked the state from enforcing it against Hecox.
In ruling against the state, US District Judge David Nye pointed to a “dearth of evidence in the record to show excluding transgender women from women’s sports supports sex equality, provides opportunities for women, or increases access to college scholarships.” A federal appeals court later affirmed Nye’s decision.
A judge in West Virginia initially ruled in favor of Pepper-Jackson, but later, after the case progressed, sided with the state. That decision, however, was reversed in April 2024 by a Richmond-based appeals court, which said the law violated her rights under Title IX, the federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at schools that receive federal funding.
“B.P.J. has shown that applying the Act to her would treat her worse than people to whom she is similarly situated, deprive her of any meaningful athletic opportunities, and do so on the basis of sex,” appeals court Judge Toby Heytens wrote in the majority decision.
The states asked the high court in 2024 to review the adverse appeals court decisions and the justices agreed to do so last July.
