Transgender Athletes Focus of Debate on Women’s Sports Participants

Politics, too, have entered the debate in a divided United States. While transgender people have broadly been more accepted across the country, the Trump administration and some states have sought to roll back protections for transgender people in health care, the military and other areas of civil rights, fueling a rise in hate crimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

In March, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports.

The law, enacted in July by a Republican-controlled legislature with no Democratic support, required athletes to participate in sports based on their sex assigned at birth. The law mandated that all participants, including transgender athletes, answer a form about their sex, surgical procedures, medications and even whether they have had organs, like testes, removed. Any dispute in an athlete’s eligibility required a physical, genetic or hormonal exam conducted by a physician.

The ban was challenged by a transgender athlete in federal court in Idaho, claiming it violated equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Chief U.S. District Judge David C. Nye temporarily halted the law on Monday, writing in an 87-page injunction that a “categorical bar to girls and women who are transgender stands in stark contrast to the policies of elite athletic bodies that regulate sports both nationally and globally,” which permit transgender women to participate in women’s sports in college and the Olympics under certain conditions.

While the ruling was not final, it was a victory for Lindsay Hecox, who is transgender and challenged the law in April, seeking to become eligible for the women’s cross-country team at Boise State University. “I’m a girl and the right team for me is the girl’s team,” Hecox said Monday in a statement. “It’s time courts recognize that and I am so glad that the court’s ruling does.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/sports/transgender-athletes-womens-sports-idaho.html