Oral arguments for two important cases on women’s sports are now set for January 13. Get familiar with the cases and let us unite in prayer for the Justices as they consider these crucial protections for women.
Little v. Hecox
Idaho was the first state to pass a law protecting equal opportunities in sports for girls and women. Enacted in 2020, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act (Idaho Code §§ 33-6201–6206) protects female-designated athletic competitions in public schools and universities (or any private school receiving public funding) by enforcing participation based on objective sex categories, and not on subjective gender or sexual identities. The law promotes fairness, safety, and equality for all.
As is often the case, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a radical pro-transgender outfit, sued the state on behalf of Lindsey Hecox, a male self-identifying as a transgender woman from Boise State University, seeking to stop the law’s enactment.
A federal district court in Idaho issued a preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the law, and the staunchly liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction, allowing discrimination against girls to continue while the case went forward. Hecox was allowed to compete against girls.
Thankfully, in June 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case (along with the West Virginia challenge we’ll discuss next). We expect the Court to finally bring justice for women and girls.
Seeing the writing on the wall, the ACLU is now trying to dismiss the case after all these years, asking the Supreme Court to send it back down for dismissal, promising that Hecox will not compete in women’s sports anymore. This is merely a procedural trick to avoid a precedent they know will be a landmark decision protecting women nationwide. The Court has deferred answering that question pending oral arguments.
The question before the Court is, “Whether laws that seek to protect women’s and girls’ sports by limiting participation to women and girls based on sex violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
West Virginia v. B.P.J.
Similarly, West Virginia enacted its Save Women’s Sports Act in 2021 (West Virginia Code §18-2-25d) to protect women’s and girls’ sports by ensuring that participation in both school and college athletics is based on sex. The law safeguards the promise of equal opportunity for women and girls is kept on the face of the radical push to allow males to compete against them in the name of “inclusion.”
The ACLU, once again, challenged the law in West Virginia federal court on behalf of B.P.J., a male, self-identifying as a transgender girl who wanted to play on the girls’ sports teams. The federal judge temporarily blocked the law, but ultimately sided with the state, acknowledging that even under heightened scrutiny, the state had a clearly important government interest in seeking to protect women and girls. But the Fourth Circuit halted enforcement of the law, once again, leaving women vulnerable to unfair, unjust, and unsafe practices.
The questions before the Court are: (1) “Whether Title IX prevents a state from consistently designating girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth,” and (2) “Whether the Equal Protection Clause prevents a state from offering separate boys’ and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex determined at birth.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, representing several young women who want to be protected through these laws, along with the two excellent attorneys general from these two states, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, are defending the laws protecting women’s sports.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) submitted an amicus brief before the Court arguing that, under Equal Protection, “sex” is not a subjective category divorced from physical, biological reality, so it would be preposterous for the Court to limit somehow a state’s ability to make laws that comport with that physical reality.
Echoing “today’s faddish social theories,” litigants and courts have started to “embrace” the idea that sex is a mutable, undefinable construct.[] The Ninth Circuit, for instance, quoted a strident proponent of gender transitioning procedures to declare that “[t]he phrase’ biological sex’ is” “imprecise,” because “[a] person’s sex encompasses the sum of several biological attributes, including sex chromosomes, certain genes, gonads, sex hormone levels, internal and external genitalia, other secondary sex characteristics, and gender identity,” each of which may not “align[].” [] (Note the inclusion of gender identity as a supposed component of sex.) The trendy view is that, “[i]n the truest scientific sense, gender and sex are multidimensional concepts with complex expressions that are related—and distinct from each other—in ways that modern science is still exploring. “….
This new word-salad paradigm of sex would detonate intermediate scrutiny and subordinate women to biological men. Under this new paradigm, sex discrimination is not about whether a person was treated differently as biological man or women, this Court’s longstanding dividing line. Rather, this paradigm misappropriates and redefines sex to mean (at least in part) an individual’s internal sense of self—their gender identity—and unknown other criteria.
Pray
Let us pray for truth and justice to prevail at the Supreme Court in these two critical cases with such significant ramifications for women going forward. Pray for the Justices to stay centered on reality and not be distracted by the lawyers’ semantical tricks in briefs and at oral arguments. Pray for courage and wisdom, as the Justices feel the pressure from elitist interest groups that demand a radical worldview for acceptance, threatening political upheaval upon them, their families, and the country every time the Court dares rule against their progressive agenda.
Pray also for our country. We need the light of Christ to shine upon our collective consciences, that we may choose righteousness, truth, and justice, rejecting the deception and darkness we have allowed to creep into our communities. Pray for courage among the churches to stand and proclaim the truth in this area.
Our nation’s future is at stake.
