Becky Pepper-Jackson challenged a West Virginia transgender sports ban along with her family. (Getty)
West Virginia’s transgender athletes ban discriminates against a 13-year-old trans girl, a US court has ruled.
A court ruling handed down by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday (16 April) described the proposed law banning trans women from women’s sports as the “definition of gender identity discrimination.”
The West Virginia law, dubbed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” was passed in 2021 and barred transgender girls from competing in girls’ teams or sporting events.
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It was challenged by 13-year-old transgender school student, Becky Pepper-Jackson, who was 11 at the time, after she was blocked from participating in her school’s cross-country and track teams.
The law was successfully blocked in February 2023 and further attempts to overturn the decision have been rejected.
The appeals court handed down yet another ruling blocking the bill from taking effect, saying that the bill violates constitutional rights and the US’ anti-discrimination act, Title IX.
“The Act treats transgender girls differently from cisgender girls,” the decision reads. “Which is – literally – the definition of gender identity discrimination.”
“The defendants cannot expect that [Becky Pepper-Jackson] will countermand her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy.”
The ruling takes into account that the lawmakers defending the bill “do not dispute” that forcing Pepper-Jackson to detransition for the purposes of competition would “contradict treatment protocols for gender dysphoria.”
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“It would also expose [Becky Pepper-Jackson] to the same risk of unfair competition and, in some sports, physical danger – from which the defendants claim to be shielding cisgender girls.”
Joshua Block, the plaintiff’s lawyer and solicitor for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling a “tremendous victory” for Pepper-Jackson, trans West Virginians, and for “the freedom of all youth to play as who they are.”
Who is 13-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson?
The plaintiff of the legal challenge, Becky Pepper-Jackson, sued West Virginia state authorities alongside her mother not long after the sports ban took effect.
The eighth grader from Bridgeport, West Virginia, has competed in track and field competitions for over three seasons, according to court filings.
A blurb on the ACLU news and commentary website says: “When Becky isn’t colouring her her pink or playing video games with her friends, she’s probably running.
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“Everyone in Becky’s family – her two older brothers and bother her parents – are avid runners.”
After the law was signed into effect by Republican West Virginia governor, Jim Justice, Pepper-Jackson sought a legal challenge for the lower courts, which initially ruled against her.
The ruling was then considered for appeal by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually took the legal challenge to the Supreme Court, which ruled against lifting an injunction against the law.
Pepper-Jackson reportedly knew she was a girl at a young age, before she or her family knew what being transgender event meant.
“Becky never had to ‘come out’ to her family,” the ACLU writes. “As early as age four, long before she or her parents for that matter, understood what the word ‘transgender’ meant.”
The initiative aims to transform agricultural access and education across four states, empowering veterans, new farmers and communities.
West Virginia University (WVU) is leading a national initiative aimed at expanding farmland accessibility to underserved populations. This effort is also designed to assist producers in securing working capital and improving food distribution channels.
The WVU Institute for Community and Rural Health (ICRH) received a five-year, $8.5 million cooperative agreement grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Increasing Land Access Program, a part of the initiatives funded under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Entitled “Working Lands of Central Appalachia,” this WVU-led project will span across West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. Collaborating with 11 state, regional, and national organizations, the initiative will focus on agricultural workforce training, developing farm-to-institution markets, and promoting the concept of food as medicine. The primary goal is to support underserved veterans, people with limited resources, and beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.
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ICRH research associate Megan Govindan is spearheading the regional effort.
“By engaging state institutions to assess demands for local food procurement and community benefit programs, this project supports healthier food systems in the community to address social determinants of health,” Govindan said in a WVU news release.
Govindan elaborated on the mission to increase land accessibility.
“The goal of increasing land access is to be able to support our agricultural future by utilizing existing markets and finding sources of capital, whether that be policy-focused or otherwise,” she said. “West Virginia leads the nation in small, family-owned farms. Supporting agricultural communities is critical to increasing food access.”
The project will include audits of public and private holdings to facilitate this increase.
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Public farmlands are those owned by entities such as the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, WVU and community hospitals. Researchers will leverage insights from landowners to boost access and production on these lands. Govindan said private farmlands often involve heirs’ property, which is inherited land without a formal will or deed, complicating federal benefit claims for descendants. As private lands open, she expects new opportunities for agricultural training and career matchmaking.
Project partners are set to enhance government policy support requiring certain institutions to incorporate fresh food into their meal plans and mandate nonprofit hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments. Utilizing this data, a structured collaborative will be formed to manage local food procurement and community benefits.
“As we’re engaging those hospitals through community benefit, it opens the opportunity for all nonprofits to be able to engage and accelerate their institutional investment,” Govindan explained. “We’ll have a standardized language of what those activities are so they can be invested in a uniform way and then replicated and scaled across the region.”
Additionally, organization partners will provide training for farmers on beginning or expanding their sales to institutions and community markets.
To enhance community access to fresh food, the consortium will conduct a needs assessment and develop a curriculum that integrates agriculture and health.
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“With this curriculum we’re not only talking about the opportunities within agriculture, but how to be able to make our communities more food secure,” Govindan said.
Govindan also highlighted the educational benefits for students involved.
“This project provides health science students with food as medicine experiences that will improve their ability to practice in rural areas, while addressing social determinants of health and engaging national, regional, and state partners,” she said.
Furthermore, the project aims to boost healthcare practitioner recruitment and retention by addressing various systems impacting population health.
State health care plans and government-funded insurance programs cannot exclude coverage for gender-affirming medical care, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-6 to affirm two lower court rulings ordering North Carolina and West Virginia to roll back policies that exclude coverage for gender-affirming care. North Carolina’s state health plan does not cover treatment “in connection with sex changes or modifications and related care,” and West Virginia’s Medicaid program covers only some gender-affirming treatments.
Attorneys for both states argued in court that the policies were based only on cost concerns, not animus toward transgender people. Judge Roger Gregory, writing for the majority Monday, said the states’ restrictions are “obviously discriminatory.”
“Because we hold that the coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest, we affirm the district courts,” Gregory wrote in the majority opinion. “We further hold that the West Virginia exclusion violates the Medicaid Act and the Affordable Care Act.”
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A federal judge in 2022 ruled that North Carolina’s health plan discriminates against transgender people by excluding coverage for gender-affirming medical care. The same year, another court ruled that West Virginia’s Medicaid program must provide coverage for care.
In a statement Monday, Tara Borelli, senior legal counsel at Lambda Legal and the lead attorney on both cases, said the 4th Circuit’s ruling “will save lives.”
“It confirms that discriminating against transgender people by denying critical medical care is not only wrong but unconstitutional,” she said. “No one should be denied essential health care, but our clients in both cases were denied coverage for medically necessary care prescribed by their doctors just because they’re transgender.”
“West Virginia’s denial of medically necessary care just because of who I am was deeply dehumanizing,” said Shauntae Anderson, one of the plaintiffs in the case against the state’s Medicaid program. “I am so relieved that this court ruling puts us one step closer to the day when Medicaid can no longer deny transgender West Virginians access to the essential healthcare that our doctors say is necessary for us.”
Gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and adults is considered medically necessary by major medical organizations, though not every trans person chooses to medically transition or has access to care. Twenty-four states since 2021 have banned treatments for transgender youths, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that tracks LGBTQ laws, and legislation in some states also restricts access to care for adults.
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In more than a dozen states, gender-affirming care is explicitly excluded from state employee benefit plans, and Medicaid policies in 10 states exclude coverage for transition-related care for individuals of all ages. In three states, Medicaid can be used to cover the cost of gender-affirming care for transgender adults but not minors.
West Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, responding to the 4th Circuit ruling with a vow to take the case to the Supreme Court.
“Decisions like this one, from a court dominated by Obama- and Biden-appointees, cannot stand: we’ll take this up to the Supreme Court and win,” he said in a statement. Morrisey, who is currently campaigning for governor of West Virginia, last week said he also plans to appeal a separate 4th Circuit ruling blocking the state from enforcing its restrictions on transgender student-athletes to the Supreme Court.
North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell (R), whose office oversees the state’s health plan, said Monday’s 4th Circuit decision was “untethered to the reality” of the fiscal situation of the plan, which is “facing the real risk of looming insolvency.”
“Accordingly, the Plan cannot be everything for everyone — our priority is to provide coverage that does the most good for the highest number of people with the finite resources we have available,” Folwell said in a statement.
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“As I have said consistently, I respect the rule of law and, therefore, will continue to follow every legal avenue available to protect the Plan and its members,” he added.
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