US supreme court considers state bans on transgender athletes in school sports – live

After more than three hours of arguments, the supreme court’s conservative justices signalled sympathy toward the legality of Idaho and West Virginia state laws banning transgender athletes from participating on female sports teams.

Here is a brief summary of some of key points from the proceedings, per Reuters.

• Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the federal government, certain states, the NCAA governing body for college sports and the US Olympic Committee “think that allowing transgender women and girls to participate will undermine or reverse that amazing success, and will create unfairness”. “Obviously, one of the great successes in America over the last 50 years has been the growth of women’s and girls’ sports. And it’s inspiring,” he said.

• Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general arguing for the state, also touched on that issue. “If women don’t have their own competitions, they won’t be able to compete,” Hurst said. “Idaho’s law classifies on the basis of sex, because sex is what matters in sports,” Hurst told the justices. “It correlates strongly with countless athletic advantages, like size, muscle mass, bone mass and heart and lung capacity.”

• But “gender identity does not matter in sports,” Hurst argued, “and that’s why Idaho’s law does not classify on the basis of gender identity. It treats all males equally and all females equally regardless of identity. And its purpose is exactly what the [state] legislature said – preserving women’s equal opportunity.”

• The challengers argued that these measures discriminate based on an individual’s sex or status as a transgender person in violation of the constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that bars discrimination in education “on the basis of sex”.

• “It is undisputed that states may separate their sports teams based on sex in light of the real biological differences between males and females. States may equally apply that valid sex-based rule to biological males who self-identify as female,”
  said the Trump administration’s lawyer Hashim Mooppan, arguing in support of the states.

• “Denying a special accommodation to trans-identifying individuals does not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender identity or deny equal protection. All of that remains true even assuming a man could take drugs that eliminate his sex-based physiological advantages,” Mooppan said.

• West Virginia solicitor general Michael Williams, arguing for the state, called the challenge a “backdoor attack on Title IX”. The challenger, Williams said, “says that West Virginia schools can no longer designate teams by looking to biological sex. Instead, schools must place students on sports teams based on their self-identified gender. But that idea turns Title IX – a law Congress passed to protect educational opportunities for girls – into a law that actually denies those opportunities for girls. The court should not embrace that backwards logic.”

• The plaintiffs maintained that the use of puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones by transgender students should matter regarding whether states can lawfully apply these bans because these medications may prevent or eliminate sex-based physical advantages. Defenders of the bans said such advantages remain despite medical treatments. “In short, male athletes who take performance-altering drugs are not similarly situated to female athletes, and states need not treat them the same,” Mooppan said.

• Kathleen Hartnett, representing the plaintiff who challenged Idaho’s law, said her client mitigated the competitive advantage through the use of testosterone suppressants and oestrogen, eliminating the ban’s justification.

Decisions are expected by early summer.