A high school student in Washington state on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to block rules there allowing transgender athletes to play on female sports teams, signaling the next front in legal battles over trans women in competitive athletics.
The request, which was made in an emergency application filed by a high school athlete and her mother, is the first time the issue has returned to the high court since June, when the justices upheld state bans on transgender women playing on women’s sports teams.
Although that decision allowed states to impose bans, the court’s majority opinion acknowledged that it left unanswered the question of whether officials could set their own policies and allow trans girls and women to participate in female sports.
The application Tuesday alleges that Washington’s policies are discriminatory and violate Title IX. The filing states that the high school athlete — identified by the initials “K.M.K.” — was sexually assaulted during a wrestling match after being “assigned to wrestle a male.”
Without the high court’s intervention, the filing states that K.M.K. and her mother, Stephanie Brown, “will suffer irreparable harms” because the student would have to miss the wrestling season starting next month. K.M.K. was 16 years old as of August, according to court records.
“High-school athletics are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities,” the filing states. K.M.K. is “already missing soccer, and she will soon miss her girls’ wrestling season” because of the policy, it continues.
The justices could rule in the coming days or weeks.
“This would make a consistent body of law for the entire country,” said John Bursch, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit organization representing the plaintiffs.
In her petition to the Supreme Court, K.M.K.’s attorneys wrote that her opponent in the wrestling match, who was “stronger and more powerful,” touched her inappropriately.
K.M.K.’s attorneys argue that the incident is proof of the safety risks inherent in allowing trans athletes to play on female sports teams.
Attorneys for the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the defendant, noted in court filings that the Pierce County prosecuting attorney, following an investigation, declined to file criminal charges in connection with the incident.
The prosecutor concluded that “physical contact was a foreseeable, albeit penalizable, byproduct of the sport,” the association wrote in court filings.
“The attempt to dress up a wrestling penalty into a Title IX sexual assault is illustrative of the hyperbole fueling Plaintiffs’ claims,” the WIAA attorneys wrote.
Attorneys for the both the WIAA and the state did not respond to requests for comment about the Supreme Court petition.
The legal issues at play may nevertheless revive the issue at the Supreme Court. Washington is among 23 states that allow transgender female athletes to compete on women’s teams.
In June, the justices ruled that West Virginia and Idaho could ban trans athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Those bans, the court held, did not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The court also concluded that bans did not offend Title IX, a landmark 1972 antidiscrimination law involving education.
Now, the court confronts a different question, said Ryan H. Nelson, an associate professor of law at South Texas College of Law at Houston.
“In June, the Supreme Court said states may keep transgender girls off girls’ teams,” Nelson wrote in an email. “This application argues they must.”
K.M.K.’s attorneys argue that Washington’s athletics rules are interfering with Brown’s constitutional right to direct her daughter’s upbringing. She is further asking the court to order the state to notify her if she will compete with a transgender athlete.
“In contact sports like wrestling, parents have the right to decide whether their daughters will compete against males,” K.M.K.’s attorneys wrote.
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