The Supreme Court Republicans of the United States (SCROTUS) has taken on the case of a transgender woman, Lindsay Hecox, who wishes to run track on the Boise State University women’s team. However, Idaho was the first state in the nation, back in 2020, to pass a blanket ban on all transgender (and some intersex) athletes competing alongside people of the same gender.
Federal courts initially blocked Idaho’s HB 500 from taking effect, but a decision on a later case narrowed the injunction to only protecting Lindsay Hecox, making her the only transgender athlete legally allowed to compete in Idaho.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little celebrated the ban, saying it “reversed years of attacks on girls and women who have worked hard for the opportunity to play fairly and safely in their chosen sport.” Aside from Lindsay Hecox, I cannot name another transgender athlete in the state of Idaho and all my searching finds zero evidence of any cisgender athlete being harmed by competing with a transgender athlete.
As always with these kinds of hateful laws, there are unintended consequences. According to the ACLU, “the law also forces all girls and women who participate in school athletics to endure invasive testing to prove their sex if anyone disputes their gender.” So, for example, your cisgender teen girl athlete, if she’s a bit flat-chested and narrow-hipped and begins dominating her sport, some jealous sportsmom of the opposing team just might lodge a dispute as to your girl’s true sex. Now you’re taking her to the clinic for some sort of genetic testing, perhaps? Or is it just a peek down her shorts by the school nurse?
It’s hard to imagine there are any safety issues to consider when Lindsay Hecox is running track. As for consideration of fairness, it depends on how you frame sex segregation in sports. Instead of seeing sports as “Men’s” and “Women’s”, thereby requiring an arbiter as to who is which, think of sports as “Elite” and “Inclusive.”
Men’s sports, after all, aren’t actually limited to men. There’s no rule that says a woman can’t play on men’s teams, and on rare occasions, there have been women football kickers and women hockey goalies on men’s teams. So, the men’s sports are really the “elite” sports where anyone of either sex can compete—it’s just that a cisgender male body dominates most sports, so the “elites” are 99.9% cis-male.
Now, think of the women’s sports as the “inclusive” sports that accommodate all the non cis-male bodies that can’t compete at the “elite” level. Science clearly shows that HRT and other trans care diminishes her athletic ability from that of a cis athlete. And if surveys are to be believed, transgender people are but 1% of the population. So, even if every trans woman athlete was allowed to compete, we’re still only dealing with one out of a hundred women on the women’s team.
One out of one hundred is about the proportion of cis women who are over 5’9″ in height. But do we consider it unfair when a 6’4″ girl is towering over her 5’4″ competitors in a basketball game? Do we ban her from playing because she’s one of the 1% with a genetic advantage? What if the 6’4″ girl is trans? What’s the difference?
Given the religious make-up (7 of 9 Catholics) of the SCROTUS, I have little hope that Lindsay Hecox will get a favorable decision, and they’ll rule that any state that wishes to ban all transgender athletes may do so freely.
