Teleforum

In 2020 and 2021, Idaho and West Virginia passed laws that required public schools and colleges to designate sports by biological sex and to forbid males from competing on women’s sports teams. Two male athletes who identified as females, one a middle school shot-put and discus thrower and the other a collegiate cross-country runner, challenged the laws in the U.S. District Courts for the District of Idaho and Southern District of West Virginia, alleging a right to compete in women’s sports and saying the state laws discriminate on the basis of sex and transgender status in violation of Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. In Little v. Hecox, the Idaho district court entered a preliminary injunction against the Idaho law for violating the Equal Protection Clause, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the West Virginia district court preliminarily enjoined the West Virginia law for violating Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause and then di