The trans athlete debate is about a lot more than sports

Hits up, a tiny change is hidden your way. Don't worry, don't worry. Starting next week, you'll be hearing from us a day early on Tuesdays and Fridays every week. So if you're joining for Code Switch on Tuesdays, we'll be right here ready for you. Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch from NPR, I'm BA Parker. And I'm Jean Tempe. So Jean, I don't know if you've noticed, but since 2020, there's been a surge of anti-trans legislation. Oh, I've definitely noticed. Come on now. It's right everywhere. So let's get into some numbers really quick. So in 2021, there were over 150 anti-trans bills introduced at the state level. And in 2025, that number was over a thousand. And we're not even halfway through this year. And there's been almost 800 anti-trans bills introduced in different states. Only a fraction of them are actually passing, but it's a fraction of a bigger and bigger slice. Right. And one of the Trump administration's first big moves was to ban trans people from enlisting in the motor. And then there was the executive order that requires that trans people have their passport specify their sex at birth, not their gender. And then there's the ban from earlier this year on gender-affirming care for people in federal prisons. So all those are federal rules, right? And now, lots of state anti-trans laws are making it to the US Supreme Court and setting federal precedent. So in 2025, the court maintained a ban on hormone therapy for minors in the state of Tennessee. And then recently, the court decided that a conversion therapy ban in Colorado violated a religious-based counselor's first amendment rights. And that was last year, but there are more trans rights cases being argued this year in front of the Supreme Court. Well, this leads us to what's happening right now with trans athletes. So this past January, Scotus heard the oral arguments for two big cases around trans athletes in schools. We're expecting to get those rulings in June. How round pride. Yeah. So, Park, who's voices that? This is Amara Jones. She's a journalist and creator of Trans/Media. She's sat through the oral arguments in January and has been following these cases for years. Okay. The first case was little V.E. Cox. Lindsay H. Cox at Idaho State and Boise wanted to compete on the cross-country running team. The first anti-transports bill to be passed in the country was in Idaho. Lindsay was installed in that and essentially sued the state in order to be able to participate in sports. Lindsay is challenging Idaho's Fairness in Women's Sports Act. That act said that public schools from elementary to college needed to designate girls and Boise teams along, quote-unquote, "biological differences." And specifically, that, quote, "ethletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls, shall not be open to students of the male sex," end quote. Now, Amara spoke with Lindsay after the initial challenge to the law back in 2021. Here's a clip of Lindsay talking about why she wanted to join the college cross-country team. Running by yourself isn't as fun as running with a team, especially with friends. I was missing that aspect, especially since I didn't really have the full experience. So to speak, I was pretending to be someone I wasn't in high school. It was just kind of sad to me that I never did it as Lindsay. And the second case was West Virginia v.B.P.J., which challenges West Virginia's Save Women's Sports Act. State policy is functionally identical to the one in Idaho, almost word for word. But in this case, the defendant was 11 years old at the time, so she was referred to by her initials. But B.P.J., or now Becky Pepper Jackson, was restricted from joining her school's track team. She never went through male puberty and has been living socially as a girl since elementary school. Both cases at their heart are about the ability of trans people to have equal access to sports based upon their gender identity. In both cases put into question if nondiscrimination policies like the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX can be applied based on quote unquote biological sex or sex assigned at birth rather than gender. And of course if you need a refresher, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is the idea that states have to apply laws equally to everybody, something that came out of reconstruction. Now, Title IX is downstream of that, so it's the policy that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding. So these cases are another test as to whether the US Constitution protects trans people. And by doing that, a lot of the debate rests on if the state even recognizes trans people as a group worthy of protection. One argument is even that they are too small a minority to define. If you begin to say that you have to be a large enough group of people to receive standing under the 14th Amendment, then that means that the 14th Amendment suddenly becomes a piece of Swiss cheese and it becomes a question of, are you guys sufficiently large and number or perceived societal impact to be discriminated against and then to need to have equal protection laws? So in today's show, I talked to journalists and mara Jones about the trans athlete cases before the Supreme Court and what's at stake for future trans legislation and civil rights legislation more broadly. All right, Parker, it's all you from here. You watched the oral arguments, right? Yes. What was the vibe in the courtroom? Besides my hard seat. So what was the vibe like? I think the vibe was tense because this issue has been deeply politicized. When a mara Jones watched oral arguments in January, she said that it was clear it was all about class and took explanatory common this. We're talking about classes under equal protection. So classifications like race or national origin or disability or age are considered in different ways under this cause. So if trans people have standing to claim equal protection, it would be a huge game changer and would be a quantum leap for the equal rights of trans people in America. That would be in contradiction to most of everything that we've seen so far. So there were several interesting exchanges between the justices and the solicitor general for the state of West Virginia, Michael R. Williams, around biology and biological definitions for sex and gender. Title IX permits sex separated teams. It does so because biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable. And that is gives insight into what I believe is like the code that helps you crack what a lot of the anti trans litigation is about, which that it could be a backdoor way to undermine the equal protection laws on gender for everyone. How so? Because if you have a very narrowly defined definition of biological sex, instead of proving that people are discriminating against you because of your perceived gender, which is what it is now, right? Then what you have to prove is that someone discriminated against you because of your sex organs. Right. It can be narrowing the basis to bring claims under equal protection. Right. And that there's a lot of ways in which the arguments are not about trans people. They are using the conversation around trans people as a vehicle to achieve these larger at a minimum, deeply conservative, at a maximum, anti-democratic goals that have been better themselves on the right for several decades now. Yeah, because it leads to this sort of slippery slope that you've talked about of the size of the population that you're a part of, somehow determine what your constitutional rights are. That's right. And one of the things that Justice Jackson pointed out, which I think is really important, which is that the equal protection of them into the constitution and the laws which are in its wake, are about the ability for individuals to get their rights, right? And that like in America, we are as concerned about individuals being able to secure their rights as we are groups, right? And that the equal protection law is designed for people who are minorities, people who are marginalized to be insured that the government isn't discriminating against them. And in this case, I actually thought that the people who are going on the part of the two trans women who said that they had faced discrimination at the hands of these laws is that they were saying that I as an individual ought to be able to compete, that I as an individual meet the criteria to be allowed to compete on the women's team and what they want is for the law to make an assessment of that, right? And I think that that was the argument of their lawyers, which was that we are talking about people and we want these people to be allowed to compete in sports because these laws fly in the face of equal protections in the United States. I mean, it's also interesting that at least in Lindsay's case, in the Idaho case, Lindsay has asked the court to drop the case because she's going to graduate, she's going to graduate soon either this year or early next year and has said, look, I'm not going to compete in sports while I am in college. So drop the case. What was interesting is that the lawyers for Idaho said essentially playing up a trope on trans people being non-trustworthy. We're saying we don't believe her, we believe that she's not telling the truth that we believe that she is just saying that because she wants you all to drop the case because she believes she's going to lose and then it's going to come back in and try to get on a team again and we'll be here again having, you know, discussing these issues. So I mean, there was just a lot of ways in which when you parse these arguments and put them together that there was a failure on the part, I would say, of the lawyers on the part of the states to actually recognize the humanity of trans people, right, when you are using tropes to say, I think that the person is lying, you know, there's long documented history and media of trans people being portrayed as being untrustworthy, which that relies on. When you say, they're not really enough of them to be discriminated against. So, you know, we shouldn't worry about it. Or you say that they can just go play on the boys team. So don't worry about it. Why are we even here? Why are we even here today? Because they can just go play on the boys team. Like, there's a win when you are fundamentally not recognizing trans people as people. And I think that that is, you know, frightening. And also one of the things that makes these laws discriminatory is that they only focus on trans women. Yes. So that is a question that I've had from the beginning. Why is this squarely focused on trans women and not trans men? Well, I actually interviewed Barbara E. Hart, who was the sponsor and passed the first anti-trans sports bill at length. I had talked to her a very long time. I want someone like Lindsey to be able to compete. But, you know, I just don't want Lindsey to be able to take away opportunities for girls and women. So I have a good sense of like how they think. And what they say is that women are so fragile in society that girls are so at risk in society that girls are the ones that need to be protected. And that this is about protecting women and girls sports, the integrity of of girls sports. And the end the end the idea here, here, the trope here that was even brought up again by the lawyer representing West Virginia, when, you know, from the bench came the question of, you know, the person in this case has never gone through male puberty, has lived her entire life as a girl and now as a young woman in every single way imaginable. Why can't she compete? And his answer was what we believe that there is just such an inherent biological advantage that boys have, that even if you don't go through male puberty and even if you go on estrogen and HRT, that, that inherent advantage that boys and men have cannot be eliminated. And so since it cannot be eliminated, you all have to see that there is this difference. So if you apply that logic to here, they believe that if there are trans men that compete against men, then the inherent biological advantage of men will be at play and that there's no real threat from the ability of transmitted competing sports. And that's not true. We know that they're trans men that have competed in a variety of sports against cis men, including Chris Mosher and Tracking Field. And they've done quite well. Again, it's this made up kind of world that they're living in. But that's their argument is that girls and women are so fragile that girls and women need to be protected. Meanwhile, I should point out that there's been actually very little protection of women and girls sports. I mean, look at the rape and abuse scandal in women's gymnastics where the most competitive and highest ranked women in the world were routinely sexually assaulted in a way where no one around them actually believed them when they were saying that it was happening. So we know that this idea of protecting women and girls in sports is a trope. It does not happen. And trans girls participation in it or not does not make girls more or less safe. We need a societal revolution in the way that we see women and girls to make women and girls safe. That has nothing to do with trans people. So I know that the population is small, but how many out trans athletes how we talk about when we were like who would be affected by this ruling directly? Well, according to the president of the NCAA out of the half a million collegiate athletes in the United States right now, he says that there are less than 10 that are trans. Like less than 10? Yes. When Utah passed its anti-trans sports legislation in 2022, there was only one trans athlete in the state that would be affected by that law. Yeah. So that means that what we are talking about are not trans people, right? We are talking about trans people. But the conversation that we're actually having is about gender and about rights and the ability to be who you are. It's not actually about harm being caused because nine people out of a half a million want to compete in college sports. Coming up. What's actually being done with trans people right now is an experiment on how you can marginalize large swats of the United States because that's the only way in order to institute what a state of goal of many authoritarians is in this moment, which is minority rule. Stay with us. Parker, just Parker, code switch. So the Supreme Court is about to issue a bunch of decisions, including two cases that would uphold state level bands on transmitted athletes competing on girls and women's teams. And I've been talking with Amar Jones, she's founder of Translash Media, who's been following these cases. Now just to heads up, she's going to remind us of two other recent scotus cases, USV Scrametti, which upholds a Tennessee ban on gender affirming care, and Bostock V Clayton County, which protects employees from being discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Amar says that based on what she's seen from the court, she has clear expectations of what the outcomes of these athlete cases will probably be. What I would say is that I think given the current composition of the court, it would be a shocker if they ruled that these two trans girls could compete in sports. But I do hear a skepticism from some conservative members of the bench that I didn't hear in Scrametti last year. What was those? What they were skeptical about was the lack of ability to apply the equal protection claims. There was a lot of wrestling around that because the Supreme Court has found that trans people are a class and Bostock. So it's already that precedent. If they were to say that trans people aren't a class in sports, what does that mean for Bostock and what does that mean for their past rulings that were more recent? So I think that they were like kind of really feeling uncomfortable in that space. Also, even Justice Alito kept coming back to this point and was saying Basically through his question, do we have to. invalidate all of the laws in the 23 states that allow trans kids to compete. Like basically how do we write an opinion? This is what his question was essentially. How do we write an opinion that allows us to keep those laws in place? And so I found that there was a wrestling with the implications as they have to deal with more and more trans cases of understanding the implications of essentially being asked to zero out an entire group of Americans. And that doesn't mean that they won't do it, but I was inclined to think that they would have a desire to rule more narrowly. So if I had to go based upon what I heard, I think it will be a ruling against. I think they would try to make it as narrow as possible because they've got two other trans cases headed to the Supreme Court. What other trans cases are coming down the pipe? There is going to be the military case. And then the passport case. You know the. Because of the marker. Yeah, can trans people get passports? That matched their gender identity. And there are a lot of questions there. I mean there's going to be a lot of things that they have to wrestle with in those cases. And I don't think that they felt that they were in a position to rule in such a way that would tie their hands on those future cases. Because even Amy Coney Barrett said, you know, at some point we're going to have to make these other decisions about trans people and like whether or not they are a class or aren't a class. Maybe this would have implications for all kinds of review. Because it seems to me that if you're never talking in any case in which scrutiny is not talking about a perfect fit, you might have this problem. So I got a sense that they're not in a position right now to say that they wanted to rule in a way that's going to tie their hands in the future or overturn the cart of negating the laws and states that exist. So the court might have painted themselves into a corner if they vote a certain way? And I think that they were very much wrestling with that because there was a lot to try to unpack in these cases and they were wrestling with them. I mean okay, however this decision is going to be decided, these girls and young women have already been banned from doing this very normal thing because they're trans. What do you think about that? All they want to do is to compete in sports because it allows them to feel connected to their schools and make friends. That's why they want to compete in sports. That's why most people compete in sports. Unless you are an elite athlete and you know it's your gravy train. You are joining sports because you're good at running or you're good at tennis and you can play tennis with other people and form relationships and represent your school and feel connected and feel grounded in a way that you don't. One of the athletes actually behind the Idaho law, Andrea Yearwood is her name and she was a young black runner in Connecticut who became the focus of a Fox News campaign around trans people in sports and actually seeing her compete is why Barbara E. Hart and Idaho passed her bill in order to ban trans women from sports because she said she was really deeply concerned because of Andrea competing 2,000 miles away in Connecticut. But one of the things that Andrea said and she decided not to run anymore after high school because she was a 17 year old girl and was targeted by Fox News. The thing that she misses the most is the ability to have the relationships with other girls. Do you miss it? Of course 100% yes. No, I still watch the collegiate track online and watch NCAA SEC conference meets NCAA championships of course I miss it. And people often ask me now like do you still run? Are you running? Even if you don't run on the team do you still like go on jog and stuff? Not as much I don't run as much now because what I miss from track is team is being around my friends are being on a team and I think if I don't have that track is very important to me but I guess seems really what like kept me going and kept me with the sport. So what we were talking about is are these basic human connections and motivations and the idea that these people are social trotsky diets trying to overturn the social order couldn't be further from the truth and the reality of their lived experience. I want to ask you about the organizations like the ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom, who sponsor anti-trans legislation. What is their role been in these debates? It's very hard to underestimate the role of ADF and bringing us to the breaking point on a lot of conversations around gender, the roles of men and women, gender identity and LGBTQ rights. They are behind the Texas Mepapristo in case. They are behind the LGBTQ KKK. They are behind many of the anti-trans legal cases including the case in Idaho where in a move that was unheard of the solicitor general for the state of Idaho turned over the closing argument at the circuit court level to the Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer, a private lawyer. That's because the Alliance Defending Freedom helped write the first anti-trans sports bill, the Idaho bill, that they eventually ended up defending before the circuit court that heard the case. Alliance Defending Freedom helped to lobby individuals in Idaho to pass the bill. What we're talking about is an organization that has its arms and finding plaintiffs, finding legislators, lobbying politicians, and then defending and driving legal strategy. The Alliance Defending Freedom says that its goal is to enshrine Christian law into the laws of the United States. Their breath is hard to underestimate in terms of their reach across the United States and their reach globally. I am thinking about the Transmilitary Band which started when President Trump signed executive order that barred transgender people from enlisting in the military and discharged active duty soldiers and the Supreme Court upheld Trump's ability to make that decision. Then there was the USV Scrametti's decision to basically allow state bands on P. R. D. Blockers and homotherapy for minors. Do these recent Supreme Court cases fit into a pattern, you think? Yes. I mean, I think that they fit into a pattern because they are about putting together a string of arguments and a string of laws to marginalize an entire group of people in the country. If that's the case, what's actually being done with trans people right now is an experiment on how you can marginalize large swats of the United States because that's the only way in order to institute what a state of goal of many authoritarians is in this moment, which is minority rule. You're going to have to come up with a mixture of laws, customs, and procedures that allow you to basically strip people of their human rights. So if you don't allow trans people to have access to passports, if you don't allow them to have equal access to health care, if you don't say that they have equal protection under the laws of the country, if you say through an executive order that hasn't been tested yet in front of the court, but it may be, that trans people actually don't exist. There's no such thing as trans people. Then what you've done is essentially create the cocktail for it, you raise your forward entire group of people. And once that formula is set, what we know in countries that have adopted similar approaches to other groups of people is that it never stops at that one group of people, that it then expands to the others whom those in control of the state and state power want to erase for their own agenda. And so I think that's the connection. I don't think that there's any coincidence about the selection of the type of cases and the legal arguments made around them or the executive orders or the claim of those executive orders. I think that all of it is designed to figure out how do you ring fence millions of Americans and if they are successful in doing that legally then they have the legal template to expand that to any group of people that they want to in this country. And that's our show. I remember y'all next week code switches about to start dropping in your feed on Tuesdays and Fridays. You don't need to do anything just listen like you always do but we thank you. Appreciate you. This episode is produced by Jess Kong. It was edited by Leah Denella, Dalian Martata and Courtney Stein. And we'd be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the code switch massive. That's Christina Kala, Xavier Lopez, Barton Gurdwood and your London song, Gwynne. As for me I'm Gene Demby. I'm BA Parker. Be Zee-oh. Hydrate.