It’s not that Lindsay Hecox dropped her lawsuit against the State of Idaho over its HB 500, the law that bans transgender athletes in school sports. She was 19 years old back in 2020 when she filed the lawsuit. Over the past five years she suffered an illness and, in 2022, the death of her father.
It’s this part of the filing that is chilling:
“Ms. Hecox has also come under negative public scrutiny from certain quarters because of this litigation, and she believes that such continued – and likely intensified – attention in the coming school year will distract her from her schoolwork and prevent her from meeting her academic and personal goals. … While playing women’s sports is important to Ms. Hecox, her top priority is graduating from college and living a healthy and safe life.”
This trans girl wants to run track, but fighting for her right to do so in Idaho has subjected her to such negative public scrutiny that she fears for her health and safety. Fighting this case all the way to the Supreme Court has focused the professional transphobes like Chaya “Libs Of TikTok” Raichik and Riley “5th Place Tie” Gaines on Lindsay Hecox, backed by the numerous right-wing media outlets that platform them.
It’s tough enough trying to run track at Boise State, a school where the women’s volleyball team forfeited matches rather than play a team with a transgender player—one whom they’d already played against previously! Forfeits that then earned the praise of the governor and legislature, and led other schools to join in on refusing to play against trans athletes.
This is in Boise, the hippie-dippie liberal part of Idaho, where almost all of the Democrats live.
Already in Idaho, providing any trans health care for minors is a felony, Medicaid denies trans health care for adults, doctors can refuse to treat trans people for anything, and deadnaming and misgendering trans people is protected by law.
And now, it appears, Idaho will be allowed to maintain its ban on transgender athletes.
