*** Update *** On January 30, 2023, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s July 2022 decision that Lindsey’s lawsuit challenging H.B. 500 is not moot and, therefore, can continue. The Court noted that although Lindsey withdrew from her college in fall 2020, she intended to re-enroll, later did re-enroll, and has been playing on the women’s club soccer team since fall 2022. Furthermore, she intends to try out for the women’s cross-country and track teams. Without the district court’s preliminary injunction against H.B. 500, which was issued in August 2020, she would be banned from playing on the club soccer team and from even trying out for the cross-country and track teams. Therefore, the Court affirmed that Lindsey has the right to continue her lawsuit, which seeks to strike down this law.

***

The National Women’s Law Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and our firm partners, Hogan Lovells led 60 organizations committed to racial, gender, and LGBTQ justice and filed an amicus brief in Hecox v. Little.

The case, filed by the ACLU on behalf of Lindsey Hecox, a woman college student who is transgender, and Jane Doe, a female high school student who is cisgender, challenges Idaho’s “Fairness in Women’s Sport’s Act.” (H.B. 500). This is the only law in the country to impose a statewide ban on all women and girls who are transgender from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

Our brief argues that targeting trans women and girls is sex discrimination and that this violates Title IX. The amicus brief warns the court that this provision will also harm women who are intersex and women who are cisgender, particularly Black and brown women and girls whose bodies are more often policed. For more information about the case and our brief, read our blog here.