Idaho's Transgender Sports Ban Faces A Major Legal Hurdle

Madison Kenyon (left), who is cisgender, runs track and cross-country at Idaho State University. She supports Idaho's transgender sports ban. Lindsay Hecox (right) is transgender and hopes to make the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University.

Alliance Defending Freedom; Joshua Roper/American Civil Liberties Union

Do transgender women and girls have a constitutional right to play on women's sports teams? That question was argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.

The landmark case stems from an Idaho law passed last year — the nation's first transgender sports ban.

For plaintiff Lindsay Hecox, a student at Boise State University, the answer to that question is clear. She is transgender, and Idaho's law, if upheld, would prohibit her from competing on women's teams.

"I'm just a 20-year-old girl, and I just want to be able to compete," she says. "It was just so blatantly wrong for politicians to legislate this."

But 19-year-old Madison Kenyon, who is cisgender, takes the opposite view. She runs track and cross-country at Idaho State University, and signed on as a party in the case, asking that Idaho's law be upheld.

"To step on the field and have it not be fair and to get beat by someone who has advantages that you'll never have, no matter how hard you train — it's so frustrating," Kenyon says. "What I'm fighting for is to preserve the integrity in women's sports and to make sure that it's a fair playing field."

A

 flurry of state laws

Idaho's Fairness in Women's Sports Act, signed into law in March 2020, would categorically prohibit transgender women and girls from kindergarten through college from competing on teams that align with their gender identity, including on intramural and club teams.

That law never went into effect. U.S. District Judge David Nye issued an injunction in August, writing that the plaintiffs who challenged the law are "likely to succeed in establishing the Act is unconstitutional as currently written."

The outcome of this case is seen as a bellwether for the numerous other transgender sports bans that have been approved around the country this year.

Governors in five states — Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia — have signed bills similar to Idaho's into law. Bills in Florida and Montana await those governors' signatures. In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem vetoed anti-trans sports legislation but issued restrictive executive orders in its place.