WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., cases in which the Court considered whether laws in Idaho and West Virginia that prohibit all transgender women and girls from joining women’s and girls’ sports teams are constitutional, Constitutional Accountability Center Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program David Gans issued the following reaction:

The Fourteenth Amendment’s universal promise of equality was designed to end prejudicial exclusions of marginalized persons, ensuring equal citizenship stature for all.  Today, the Roberts Court’s conservative supermajority hollows out this bedrock promise, upholding discriminatory laws that exclude transgender women and girls from participation in sport teams and clubs without the hard look the Constitution requires.  Rather than follow the Supreme Court’s precedents, the majority substitutes a watered-down form of judicial scrutiny, deferring to the state and permitting it to exclude from participation in sports all transgender women and girls, even those who possess no biological advantage.

Constitutional Accountability Center Appellate Counsel Joshua Blecher-Cohen continued:

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As the CAC amicus brief explained, the history of the Amendment underscores its breadth and application to “any person.” In upholding laws in West Virginia and Idaho that exclude transgender women and girls like B.P.J. and Lindsay Hecox from participating in school sports, the Court today denies them that guarantee of equal protection.

Constitutional Accountability Center Vice President Praveen Fernandes also noted:

The Roberts Court’s conservative supermajority made unnecessary factual findings that have not been properly litigated in the lower courts. As Justice Sotomayor’s dissent points out, this was flatly wrong, and it is an error that comes with real harms for transgender women and girls.