*Meaghan Slattery
I. Introduction
On July 3, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear Little v. Hecox to decide on the issue of “[w]hether laws that seek to protect women’s and girls’ sports by limiting participation to women and girls based on sex violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”[1] The case may establish a definitive level of scrutiny for courts to apply to legislation affecting transgender individuals, specifically transgender athletes.[2]
A transgender woman, Lindsay Hecox, brought this case after being unable to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, and an unnamed cisgender woman (identified in the case as “Jane Doe”) who plays on high school varsity teams and who feared that her sex would be disputed under the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act due to her masculine presentation.[3] Plaintiffs first filed a motion for preliminary injunction, which the United States District Court for the District of Idaho granted.[4]
The State, as well as the intervenors,[5] appealed the order granting the preliminary injunction, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed the order but remanded the case for clarification of the scope of the preliminary injunction.[6] The State filed a petition for writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court on July 11, 2024, and the Court granted the petition with plans to hear the case in the next Term.[7]
II. The Idaho Law
The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act is at the center of the dispute.[8] The statute designates that all athletic teams sponsored by a “public primary or secondary school, a public institution of higher education, or any institution whose students or teams compete against” such institutions shall fall into one of three categories: “(a) Males, men, or boys; (b) Females, women, or girls; or (c) Coed or mixed.”[9] It then states that “[a]thletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex.”[10]
Further, the law subjects women and girls, cisgender and transgender, to an invasive dispute resolution procedure whenever any person involved in the team or sport deems it necessary.[11] A dispute is resolved by “requesting that the student provide a health examination … that shall verify the student’s biological sex.”[12] The health care provider shall make this verification as part of a “routine sports physical examination” which relies on “one (1) or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”[13]
The law bans all transgender student athletes from participating in sports by classifying sports teams into only three limited categories based on biological sex.[14] It also makes Idaho the first state to impose an outright ban on transgender student athletes.[15]
III. District Court and Appellate Court Decision
Lindsay and Jane both challenged the law’s constitutionality, arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They also requested a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of the Idaho law while it was pending trial on the merits.[16] Those defending the Act include members of the government and school boards, as well as proposed interveners (collectively “Defendants”).[17] The district court granted the preliminary injunction because it believed the challenge was likely to succeed on the merits based on how the law is currently written and the arguments of both parties.[18]
In affirming the district court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that it did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Lindsay was likely to succeed on the merits of her equal protection claim.[19] The Circuit Court established that heightened scrutiny applies because “the Act discriminates against transgender women by categorically excluding them from female sports, as well as on the basis of sex by subjecting all participants in female athletics, but no participants in male athletics, to invasive sex verification procedures to implement that policy.”[20] The court also determined that the Act likely does not survive heightened scrutiny because it is not substantially related to any of the proposed government interests, even though the interests are likely important as they relate to the standard of review.[21]
The Ninth Circuit determined that most gender-affirming medical care cannot or will not alter the characteristics described in the verification process prescribed by the Act.[22] It also suggests that previous policies in Idaho high school sports, which limited participation by transgender athletes until they had completed one year of hormone therapy to suppress testosterone levels, are what prompted the legislature to pass this law statewide.[23]
The appellate court suggested that the scope of the injunction was likely too broad and therefore remanded the case for further findings on that issue.[24] Additionally, the court found that the scope of the injunction was unclear because it did not specify whether enforcement was enjoined, in whole or in part, and to whom the enforcement applies.[25] With this decision, the court determined the narrow issue regarding the injunction but left the larger question of whether any restriction on transgender participation in sports would violate the Equal Protection Clause.[26] Instead, the Ninth Circuit suggests that the intermediate scrutiny analysis is heavily fact-dependent, so the Plaintiff’s constitutional challenge will likely succeed, but leaves the larger and broader question to the Supreme Court.[27]
IV. Conclusion
With the Supreme Court case pending, two arguments will emerge, only a preview of which is available to the public as the briefs are being written.[28] The State suggests that the Court should find that the laws pass intermediate scrutiny as a constitutional sex-based classification, or alternatively, that transgender status is not a “quasi-suspect class” requiring a heightened level of scrutiny.[29] Respondents, Lindsay and Jane, will likely urge the Court to adopt the reasoning and holding of the lower courts and use heightened scrutiny as applied to transgender athletics to determine that the Idaho law is unconstitutional.[30]
The Justices will decide whether heightened scrutiny applies to laws discriminating against transgender individuals, and if so, how it should be applied in such cases.[31]
*Meaghan Slattery is a second-year day student at the University of Baltimore School of Law where she is a Staff Editor for Law Review, a Distinguished Scholar of the Royal Graham Shannonhouse III Honor Society, and a Law Scholar for Civil Procedure I. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Law and Criminal Justice from Hood College and spent her past summer as a law clerk at Silverman Thompson Slutkin and White where she continues to work part-time throughout the semester. Meaghan hopes to pursue her law career in the Baltimore area.
[1] Little v. Hecox (Transgender Athletes), SCOTUSblog, https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/little-v-hecox/ (last visited Oct. 13, 2025).
[2] See Carrie Evans Wilson & Abigail L. Parnell, Supreme Court to Decide Legality of Trans-Athlete Bans, Montgomery McCraken (July 15, 2025), https://www.mmwr.com/supreme-court-to-decide-legality-of-trans-athlete-bans/.
[3] Hecox v. Little (Hecox II), 104 F.4th 1061, 1070, 1072 (9th Cir. 2024); see discussion infra Part II.
[4] Hecox v. Little (Hecox I), 479 F. Supp. 3d 930, 943 (D. Idaho 2020).
[5] Madison Kenyon and Mary Marshall were permitted to intervene in this case as cisgender women residing in Idaho and collegiate athletes on scholarship at Idaho State University who both competed against and lost to June Eastwood, a transgender woman athlete at the University of Montana. Hecox II, 104 F.4th at 1072.
[6] Hecox II, 104 F.4th at 1091.
[7] Little v. Hecox, 145 S. Ct. 2871 (2025); see also Little v. Hecox (Transgender Athletes), supra note 1.
[8] Idaho Code § 33-6201 (2025).
[9] Id. § 33-6203(1).
[10] Id. § 33-6203(2).
[11] Hecox II, 104 F.4th at 1071–72 (examining Idaho Code § 33-6203(3) (2025)); see also Mark Walsh, Appeals Court Weighs Idaho Law Barring Transgender Female Students From Girls’ Sports, EducationWeek (May 4, 2021), https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/appeals-court-weighs-idaho-law-barring-transgender-female-students-from-girls-sports/2021/05.
[12] Idaho Code § 33-6203(3).
[13] Id.
[14] Id. § 33-6203(1)(a)-(c).
[15] Melissa Quinn, Supreme Court Takes Up State Bans on Transgender Athletes in Girls’ and Women’s Sports, CBS News (July 3, 2025, at 12:01 PM ET) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-transgender-athletes-state-bans-girls-sports/.
[16] Hecox I, 479 F. Supp. 3d 930, 944–45.
[17] Id. at 946–47.
[18] Id. at 987–89.
[19] Hecox II, 104 F.4th 1061, 1091.
[20] Id. at 1074.
[21] Id. at 1081.
[22] Id. at 1075.
[23] Id. at 1070.
[24] Id. at 1089–91.
[25] Id. at 1081, 1090.
[26] Id. at 1091.
[27] Id.
[28] See Little v. Hecox (Transgender Athletes), supra note 1.
[29] John Elwood, Off the Field, off the Rails, and off on Vacation: The Final Relists of October Term 2024, SCOTUSblog: Relist Watch (July 1, 2025), https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/final-relists-of-october-term-2024/.
[30] Contra Brief for Petitioners at 20, Little v. Hecox, U.S. (2025) (No. 24-38), 2025 WL 1829165.
[31] See Little v. Hecox (Transgender Athletes), supra note 1.
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