Transgender woman urges Supreme Court to drop sports case

Lawyers for a 24-year-old transgender woman urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to dismiss a challenge to an Idaho law that bans transgender women and girls from participating on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Lindsay Hecox, who originally filed the case because Hecox wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, will no longer play women’s sports in Idaho, Hecox’s lawyers said. And as a result, Hecox’s legal team argued, the case is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy.

Alan Hurst, the solicitor general of Idaho, told the justices that the state intended to oppose Hecox’s request.

In a six-page filing, Hecox’s lawyers explained that Hecox had been dealing with illness, “her father’s passing,” and “negative public scrutiny from certain quarters because of this litigation.” As a result, they said, Hecox has decided not to play women’s sports in Idaho, and “dismissed with prejudice her claims against petitioners in the district court” – that is, so that they cannot be refiled. As a result, the lawyers concluded, “there is no possibility that the controversy might reemerge.”

Hecox’s lawyers asked the justices to throw out the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit – which upheld a preliminary ruling allowing Hecox to participate on women’s sports teams while the litigation continued – and send the case back to the lower court with instructions to dismiss it.

In a brief letter to the court, Hurst asked for an extension of time to respond to Hecox’s “suggestion” – the technical term for Hecox’s filing – that the case is now moot. He explained that the state’s response to the filing would normally be due on the same day as its opening brief on the merits, and he asked for a 10-day extension, giving the state a new deadline of Sept. 26.

The Supreme Court has not yet scheduled Hecox’s case for oral argument. In Hecox’s case, the 9th Circuit’s affirmance of the district court’s preliminary ruling rested on its conclusion that the Idaho law likely violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection – that is, the idea that the government must generally treat everyone fairly. On the same day that the court granted Idaho’s petition for review of the 9th Circuit’s ruling in Hecox’s case, it also agreed in West Virginia v. B.P.J.  to hear West Virginia’s petition for review of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in favor of a transgender teen who wants to compete on girls’ sports teams. In that case, the court of appeals ruled that a Virginia law barring the teen from doing so violates Title IX, a federal civil rights law which prohibits gender discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.