A female high school wrestler in Washington urged the Supreme Court earlier this week to intervene in a lawsuit over the state’s laws allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports, as the high court could issue another key ruling about transgender sports policies months after its landmark June decision.
Kallie Keeler, a biological female wrestler, sued the Washington officials after she claimed she was sexually assaulted by a biological male fighter she competed against during a high school girls’ wrestling tournament, alleging the state’s policy allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports violates Title IX. Keeler, who is being represented by the conservative law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, asked a federal district court and federal appeals court to halt the policy or allow her to opt out of competing against male athletes without any penalty, but both lower courts denied those bids. The Supreme Court has been urged to grant her emergency petition, with Keeler’s lawyers framing it as a protection of her ability to compete safely in women’s sports while the lawsuit moves forward in federal court.
“They demand that K.M.K. continue competing against males or sit out sports entirely. And they refuse to opt K.M.K. out of matches against males without penalty—or even to give Brown notice of such a match so she may opt K.M.K. out herself. The district court and Ninth Circuit declined to protect K.M.K. or empower her mother to protect her,” Keeler’s lawyers said in the petition to the Supreme Court, referring to her as “K.M.K.” “The Court should grant Plaintiffs’ application for an injunction pending appeal.”
“Absent an injunction, K.M.K. will be forced to miss the girls’ wrestling season that begins in November, losing the equal opportunity that Title IX guarantees,” the petition added.
The Supreme Court ordered Washington officials to respond to the petition by Tuesday at 4 p.m.
State laws regarding transgender athletes, usually biological men who identify as women competing in women’s sports, made their way to the Supreme Court earlier this year, when the high court upheld a state law barring men from women’s sports by a 6-3 vote. The ruling upheld laws in Idaho and West Virginia, along with similar laws in various other states, separating men’s and women’s sports by biological sex. The majority on the high court found that both the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX permit states to separate sports on the basis of biological sex.
The Supreme Court’s June ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. did not answer whether state laws that allow biological men to compete in women’s sports violate Title IX, but that issue appears poised to make its way to the high court in the coming years.
The emergency application brought by Keeler urges the justices to consider taking up the issue of “whether gender-identity participation policies violate Title IX’s prohibition against treating females worse than males in sports” and “whether a parent’s fundamental right to direct her child’s care entitles her to notice and opt-out before her daughter is forced to compete against male athletes in contact or competitive-skill sports.”
“From K.M.K. being sexually assaulted in a wrestling match, to two boys winning 15 state titles in the girls’ track-and-field division in Connecticut, to a boy pitching every inning en route to a state championship in girls’ softball in Minnesota, female athletes across the country are wrongly being denied the opportunity to fair and safe competition in sports while male athletes get to compete on boys’ teams and girls’ teams,” Keller’s emergency petition said.
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It is rare for the Supreme Court to take up an emergency petition for full oral arguments on the merits of the case, but the high court did do that late last month by electing to hear oral arguments over whether the Trump administration’s third-country deportation policy is lawful.
The Supreme Court will weigh in on a different law regarding transgender people in Washington in December when it hears oral arguments in International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson. The case centers on a law that allows runaway minors to receive transgender surgeries without parental permission, in addition to exempting the state from a requirement to inform the parents of their child’s location and condition, by making genital and chest surgeries a “protected health care service.”