The Trump Court was asked to weigh in on laws and regulations in 29 states, including Virginia, banning trans athletes from competing in youth and college sports, affecting the 10 trans athletes among the 530,000 athletes on NCAA-sanctioned teams at the college level, and five – 5! – playing on girls’ teams at the K-12 level.
Naturally, the Court issued a 6-3 ruling, handed down today, affirming the constitutionality of the state laws; also naturally, Donald Trump issued a statement minutes later declaring the ruling to be a “BIG WIN.”
Trump, you may remember, had made the issue of “biological males” playing against women a major thrust of his 2024 presidential campaign, because no one among his White evangelical base has any sense of the actual demographics.
Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population identifies as trans, though 3.3 percent of teens ages 13-17 – the raw number there translates to an estimated 724,000 trans kids.
These kids face obvious barriers to being involved in team sports, starting with simply not being allowed to in the 29 states, again, including Virginia, that already bar their participation.
Even where sports is an option, more barriers, starting with the fear of harassment and bullying, simply feeling unwelcome, fear of drawing attention to themselves, pile on.
It’s to a point where attorneys for the plaintiff in one of the two cases that were rolled into the Supreme Court case, Lindsay Hecox, who had wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State, wanted the court to dismiss her case because she had forsworn trying to play on women’s teams, with Hecox conceding that she was “too slow.”
Which pushes back against the narrative advanced by Trump and the legions who have been led to believe that trans athletes are taking over women’s sports – that male athletes are making the decision to transition because they think they can be more competitive against females.
The few trans youths who want to try out for teams are motivated by the same thing that other kids and young adults: their love of sports.
Future generations are going to look back at today’s ruling as our Plessy v. Ferguson moment.
Our country had a real chance here to be more inclusive, and instead, went deeper down the segregation route.
For shame.
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Chris Graham
