Supreme Court to hear arguments in challenges to West Virginia’s transgender athlete ban Tuesday

by Lori Kersey, West Virginia Watch
January 12, 2026

Nearly five years after West Virginia’s transgender athlete ban became law, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case to decide its future Tuesday. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a now 15-year-old Bridgeport, West Virginia, high school sophomore, is seeking to overturn West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which former Gov. Jim Justice signed into law in 2021.

The law bars transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams in public schools and colleges. It does not ban transgender males from competing on boys’ or men’s teams. 

Supreme Court justices are expected to decide whether West Virginia’s law violates Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits states from denying equal protection of the law to anyone within its jurisdiction.                                                                                                                                                                    

In a news release, West Virginia attorney general J.B. McCuskey called the case “monumental” not only for West Virginia, but for the entire country. The outcome of the case will impact the future of women’s sports, the promises of Title IX, and the safety of our daughters, he said in the news release.

“We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold the Save Women’s Sports Act and agree with what West Virginia has been saying for years: biological sex matters in sports, and allowing males to compete against female athletes is unfair and dangerous,” McCuskey said in the news release.

Billy Wolfe, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, which is representing Pepper-Jackson in the case, said the state’s transgender athlete ban is part of a broader national effort to target transgender people and use them as political cudgel. 

“There is, of course, no threat posed by Becky Pepper-Jackson to women in West Virginia sports,” Wolfe said. “We’re a state of 1.8 million people, and there is one single trans girl in this state who wants to play sports with her friends. She doesn’t represent a threat to the existence of women’s sports in any way. Sadly, all of this stuff is about politics.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, McCuskey said it was “slightly disingenuous” to argue that the state’s transgender athlete ban affects only Pepper-Jackson. 

“It’s decidedly not about one person,” McCuskey said. “It’s about the totality of athletics in West Virginia.”

“We want to make sure that the playing fields are delineated by their biological sex,” he said. 

Along with Pepper-Jackson’s challenge, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will also hear arguments in Little v. Hecox, which challenges Idaho’s transgender athlete ban.

Dale Melchert, senior staff attorney for the Transgender Law Center, said the two cases are narrow and specific to the students who have filed the challenges, but decisions by the Supreme Court can have broad impacts. 

“At the end of the day, this is really about whether or not all students are able to receive the same benefits of education,” Melchert said. “Athletics are a key part of community life and educational life. They’re a place where young people get to learn about being on a team, building self confidence, learning leadership skills, or simply just playing and having fun. But bans like West Virginia’s and and Idaho’s, they’re blanket bans that make it impossible, regardless of the specifics of any individual trans girl, to play.”

In July 2021, US District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia issued a preliminary injunction allowing Pepper-Jackson to continue competing on the girls’ cross-country and track and field teams while the case moved forward. In 2023, the court ruled that the law is constitutional, dissolving the preliminary injunction and granting summary judgement for the state of West Virginia.

In 2023, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals granted Pepper-Jackson’s request to keep playing while the case was being appealed. In April 2024, the same court ruled in favor of Pepper-Jackson, reversing the Southern District’s decision. In the latter decision, the court ruled that the law violates transgender students’ rights under Title IX, a federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in education programs.

Wolfe said according to the ACLU’s count, Becky Pepper Jackson’s case is only the third case in recent history to have originated in West Virginia to go before the U.S. Supreme Court. In Barnett vs. the West Virginia Board of Education during World War II, the ACLU of West Virginia represented two Jehovah’s Witnesses students who successfully challenged a school requirement to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which went against their religion. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of West Virginia and other Republican-led states that sought to limit the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to limit carbon emissions. 

The ACLU of West Virginia is chartering a bus to Washington, D.C. so that supporters of Pepper-Jackson can join a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as the case is being heard. The bus will pick up passengers in Charleston, Martinsburg and Morgantown.

Wolfe said the bus rides and rally can be a community-building exercise for people against legislation designed to make marginalized people feel like they’re all alone with a target on their back. 

“I think that these events tend to bring people together, remind them that they’re not alone, that there are people who are in this fight with them,” Wolfe said. “And so it makes for, I think, a very positive atmosphere. Even though we know that what we’re fighting for is very serious. It’s very harmful stuff that we’re pushing back against.”

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