Transgender teen athlete in a Supreme Court fight knows the upcoming sports season could be her last

WASHINGTON– WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw at West Virginia last year, when she was only in her junior year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her next season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, and is one of more than two dozen states with similar laws. Although West Virginia’s law was blocked in lower courts, the outcome could be different in the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions to be applied to transgender people over the past year.

The justices will hear arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state’s law.

Decisions are expected in early summer.

President Donald Trump’s Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including kicking transgender people out of the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the national battle over transgender girls’ participation in athletics, which has played out at the state and federal levels, as Republicans have exploited the issue to fight for sports equity for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press conducted via Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because… it’s important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a couch in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal battle that began when she was a middle school student who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson became a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among the shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practice at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson takes puberty-blocking medications and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in third grade, although the Supreme Court’s decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatments for minors forced her to leave the state for treatment.

Her improvement as an athlete was cited as a reason why she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger and faster than women. And if we allow biological men to play sports against biological women, those differences will erode women’s abilities and places in those sports that we have fought so hard for over the past 50 years,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said in an interview with the AP. McCuskey said he doesn’t know of any other transgender athletes in the state who have competed or are attempting to compete in girls’ or women’s sports.

Despite the small number of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsized importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committees banned transgender women from playing women’s sports after Trump signed an executive order to ban their participation.

The public generally supports limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor allowing transgender children and teens to compete only on sports teams that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender with which they identify, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about a quarter did not of opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8 percent, and 724,000 people ages 13 to 17, or 3.3 percent, identify as transgender in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue describe it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

“I think there are cultural, political and legal barriers that all support this idea that the fact that a man can be a woman is a lie,” said John Bursch, an attorney with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, which has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we must accept this truth. And the sooner we do, the better for women everywhere, whether on high school sports teams, in high school locker rooms and showers, in shelters for abused women, in women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson came up with different terms to describe the efforts to keep her daughter off West Virginia playgrounds.

“Hate. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. “This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson saw some of the uglier sides of the debate, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt during the championship competition that said, “Men have no place in women’s sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they know I’m just here to have a good time. That’s all. But it just hurts sometimes, it upsets me sometimes, but I try to shake it off,” she said.

A classmate, identified as AC in court documents, said Pepper-Jackson herself used graphic language to sexually intimidate her teammates.

When asked if she said what was alleged, Pepper-Jackson replied, “I didn’t. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal battle will center on whether the Constitution’s equal protection clause or Title IX’s anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people was sex discrimination, but declined to extend the logic of that ruling to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court was flooded with legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and academics.

The outcome could also influence separate legal efforts to ban transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in school concerts and jazz groups.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but it’s what I’m going to have to do,” she said.