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By Jenni Fink
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Riley Gaines is going to be paying attention to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during Tuesday’s hearing on transgender athletes because of comments the jurist made during her confirmation hearing.
Why It Matters
Transgender athletes competing in women’s sports has been a cultural flashpoint for years and dozens of states have passed laws that ban transgender girls from competing on girls' sports teams. Courts have ruled that the laws in West Virginia and Idaho violate Title IX, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex.
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The Supreme Court is going to decide if states are within their constitutional right to have those laws in place and the decision will affect laws in more than two dozen states.
What To Know
Gaines, host of The Riley Gaines Show on Fox News networks, rose to prominence in 2022 when she tied for fifth place with Lia Thomas in the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Thomas had recently become the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title, and her inclusion in the women’s division sparked a movement to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.
In the years since, states have tried to block transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. President Donald Trump said visas won’t be given to transgender athletes for the Olympics and the NCAA announced transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth cannot compete on a women’s team.
And on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases brought by transgender athletes challenging laws in their home states that bar them from competing on female teams.
Gaines told Newsweek that she thinks it's "wild" that the Supreme Court has to decide the issue, but that it’s “long overdue.”
“I’m confident that we have a Supreme Court makeup that will consist of enough people who understand that men and women are physically, biologically and anatomically different,” Gaines said.
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One of the two cases the Supreme Court will hear involves Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old transgender girl who wants to be able to compete on her high school’s female track and field team. Pepper-Jackson transitioned in third grade and she argues that because she never went through male puberty, she doesn’t have the same hormone levels or muscle mass as a boy her age.
However, critics argue that as she’s gotten older, she’s taken opportunities away from female athletes. West Virginia’s lawyers in the case argued that she “displaced nearly 400 female competitors” in one season of competing in shot put and discus. Pepper-Jackson has said that she put in the extra work necessary to succeed at the sport.
While the conservative majority of the Supreme Court seemingly bodes well for the states fighting to keep their bans in place, the decision could surprise some people. In June, the Supreme Court upheld a law in Tennessee that banned some gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The conservative majority rejected the argument that the law discriminated “on the basis of sex.”
But, in 2020, the High Court ruled that a transgender woman fired by her employer because she was transgender was discriminated against “on the basis of sex.” In the opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that if the woman was a member of a different sex, she wouldn’t have been terminated.
Gaines said the ruling in the 2020 case doesn’t make her nervous about how the court will rule in Tuesday’s cases because they’re different. Sports, she said, isn’t about “feelings,” like a job could be, and it’s about physical ability and whether there’s an unfair advantage for transgender athletes.
Tuesday’s hearing could shine a spotlight on Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose confirmation hearing occurred as battles over transgender athletes were starting. Jackson was asked during her hearing to define a woman, which she said she couldn’t do because she wasn’t a biologist. Senator Marsha Blackburn pushed back, asking Jackson what “message” Thomas competing on a woman’s team sends to girls who aspire to compete—and win.
“Senator, I’m not sure what message that sends. If you’re asking me about the legal issues related to it—those are topics that are being hotly discussed, as you say, and could come to the court,” Jackson said.
Gaines said she’ll be paying attention to what Jackson says on Tuesday, calling her a “very intelligent woman,” but adding that her inability to define what a woman is “just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The other case that the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday involves a transgender female athlete in Idaho. Lindsay Hecox, a former transgender track and cross-country runner who was banned from trying out for her school teams, sued in 2020 over the ban. Hecox didn’t make her college team at Boise State but was barred from joining a club team.
Last year, she asked a lower court to dismiss her case because she decided not to compete in sports. She added that she didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore.
What They’re Saying
Heather Jackson, Becky’s mother, to ABC News: "She has testosterone from her adrenal glands just like every female out there, but that's the only testosterone she has. She's actually not the biggest person on her team. There's people taller than her; there's people shorter than her. She's just an average female teenager."
Gaines, also to Newsweek: “They are just ruling if it's constitutional for states to be able to at all. So it feels like the bare minimum, to decide if we can have rights as women, but nonetheless, I feel hopeful and optimistic about what the outcome will be.”
What Happens Next
The Supreme Court is likely to rule on the case in June, and its decision could disrupt laws in more than two dozen states.
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