West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey has filed a suit in support of the five middle-school girls who were banned from an upcoming track event after they forfeited a shot put competition against a biological male.
“I will do everything in my power to defend these brave young girls,” Morrisey said Monday. “This is just wrong. We must stand for what’s right and oppose these radical trans policies.”
On April 18, the girls participated in the Harrison County Middle School Championships. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old boy who identifies as a girl, competed alongside the girls. For years, Pepper-Jackson has been embroiled in a legal battle against West Virginia over a state law that bans males from competing in female sports in public schools. The Fourth Circuit recently ruled in favor of Pepper-Jackson, allowing him to compete in the female category, but the court did not overturn the law altogether.
Pepper-Jackson takes puberty blockers and estrogen hormone therapy, and began to identify as a girl in third grade. In a Harper’s Bazaar article published last year, the pre-teen’s mother, Heather, said that she knew her son was “different” at around age three.
“She eventually told us that her body didn’t match who she was because she was a girl. We listened. We knew that being treated like a girl made her happy because it affirmed who she was,” Heather wrote. “And that’s the thing: People often tell us we are forcing this on Becky. But no, you cannot force being trans—or any gender identity or sexual orientation—on anyone, just as no one has forced me to be cisgender and straight. This is who I am, and being a girl is who Becky is.”
In protest of the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision, the middle school girls forced to compete against Pepper-Jackson “stepped out of the set-put circle, forfeited, and refused to compete in protest of the court decision and the ongoing unfairness of permitting a biological male to compete in women’s sporting events,” according to the brief.
On April 25, despite no previous warning or reprimand from school administrators, a principal informed the girls’ parents that the athletes who protested would not be allowed to compete in an upcoming track-and-field meet.
Morrisey claims in the lawsuit that the students “engaged in constitutionally protected speech and expression when they stepped out of the shot put circle” and added that by barring the girls from participating in future meets, the Harrison County Board of Education “engaged in actions that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in the constitutionally protected activity of speech and expression in protest of a court decision and the ongoing unfairness of permitting a biological male to compete in women’s sporting events.”
Debates over West Virginia’s sports policies follow President Joe Biden’s recent Title IX rewrite, which will soon allow male students to compete in female sports. Multiple states and non-profits have challenged Biden’s regulations, arguing that the rewrite would remove constitutional protections for women in bathrooms and locker rooms.