West Virginia Attorney General says state will appeal ruling on restrictions on transgender athletes to Supreme Court

West Virginia plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case for a second time about the state’s restrictions on transgender student-athletes, its attorney general said Wednesday.

“This is a significant case to bring to the Supreme Court and will potentially set a precedent for the entire country,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, told reporters Wednesday at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol. Stated in Charleston, W. .Va.

West Virginia will present its appeal to the Supreme Court “over the next month,” said Morrisey, who is currently campaigning for governor of the state. “We want to make sure we time our process to maximize the chance of this case being heard and, most importantly, that we will win,” he said.

In 2021, West Virginia became the seventh state – and the sixth that year – to pass a law banning transgender women and girls from competing on women’s sports teams. The state’s Save Women’s Sports Act requires public schools and colleges to designate sports participation based on “biological sex” rather than gender identity.

Twenty-four states now have laws on the books that prevent student-athletes from competing according to their gender identity, although not all of them apply. according to the Movement Advancement Projecta non-profit organization that monitors LGBTQ laws.

A federal appeals court last week blocked West Virginia from enforcing its law, siding with a transgender teenager who sued the state after she was barred from trying out for girls’ cross-country and track and field teams at her school. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, said the state law violates Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in schools and educational programs that receive federal funding.

The Biden administration issued new rules last week cementing protections for LGBTQ students under Title IX, in part by expanding the law’s definition of sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The administration has not yet finalized a separate rule governing athletics eligibility.

Morrisey, who argued the case on behalf of the state, said Wednesday that the district court’s logic in determining that the law discriminates against transgender athletes is “flawed.”

“Somehow, defying logic, the 4th Circuit majority still concluded that this law was directed at transgender students. They are wrong,” he said.

Becky Pepper-Jackson, the 13-year-old girl at the center of the case, has been allowed to join her school’s girls’ cross-country team since the West Virginia law was blocked in February 2023. One of her classmates joined Join Morrisey in supporting statewide restrictions on transgender athletes on Wednesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of West Virginia and Lambda Legal, the organizations representing Pepper-Jackson in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to follow Morrisey’s announcement, Fairness West Virginia, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, said laws like West Virginia’s “contribute to a hostile environment where trans youth are more likely to experience harassment, intimidation and discrimination.”

It’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will take up the state’s case once its appeal is filed — the court last year refused to intervene in the law. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court’s chief conservatives, said they would have heard the case, which they said “concerns an important issue that this Court will likely be required to address in the near future.”