West Virginia has a law that prevents transgender boys from competing on girls’ athletic teams. However, one transgender athlete challenged the law because he began to “transition” when he was in third grade and never reached puberty.
A federal judge agreed.
“The defendants cannot expect that [this athlete] will countermand her social transition, her medical treatment, and all tahe work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy,” Judge Toby Heytens wrote in his decision, according to the Associated Press.
This does not mean the entire law is off the books. It only means this one student can participate.
Members of the Bridgeport Middle School girls’ track & field team in Bridgeport, W.V., disagreed. Some of the girls protested the inclusion of a boy in the competition by “stepping in and then stepping out” of the shot put ring.
It wasn’t a big protest. But considering that Joe Biden is about ready to lower the boom on women across America by allowing transgender athletes to compete on girls’ teams, we’re going to be seeing a lot more protests.
🚨🚨FIVE middle school female athletes in West Virginia refuse to throw shot put against male, Becky Pepper-Jackson.
This comes just 2 days after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the WV law that says you must compete in the category that matches your sex.
It’s a… pic.twitter.com/RzMgh4jVRU
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 19, 2024
Karen Townsend at HotAir:
This was a very brave move on their part. Middle school girls are often plagued by insecurity and a deep desire to fit in, to not make waves. In this case, these girls had to draw attention to themselves as the ones fighting the fight that has to be fought. I hope they had the support of their parents and that is what gave them the courage to demand a return to sanity. I wonder if the parents are actively supporting their daughters at school board meetings and other public forums.
The coach was following the court’s ruling. Hopefully, the coach has a moral compass and speaks out, too, on behalf of the girls.
One of the girls who stepped out said that the trans athlete won the shot put event during the championships. Shocker.
On a less negative note, the judge suggested that separate classifications for transgender athletes were not entirely out of the question.
That does not mean that “we do not hold that government officials are forbidden from creating separate sports teams for boys and girls or that they lack power to police the line drawn between those teams,” the judges added. Nor does it mean that federal law “requires schools to allow every transgender girl to play on girls teams, regardless of whether they have gone through puberty and experienced elevated levels of circulating testosterone.” Only in Pepper-Jackson’s “particular case” is the ban discriminatory, it said.
Karen’s analysis of the courage it must have taken for those little girls to stand up for their rights gives me hope that if Biden makes the Title IX nightmare a reality, women and girls will push back strongly.