A self-proclaimed transgender West Virginia athlete has won the race to claim a state championship before potentially facing a ban for being a male competing in female sports.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, a sophomore at Bridgeport High School, won the state Class AAA shot put competition, according to theCharleston Gazette-Mail.
His winning throw was more than two feet beyond that of the second-place finisher.
Pepper-Jackson has spent the last five years fighting to compete against females, helped by the ACLU of West Virginia, which filed a lawsuit on his behalf in 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed him to compete against females, pending a final ruling.
“I know how hurtful a law like this is to all kids like me who just want to play sports with their classmates, and I’m doing this for them,” Pepper-Jackson has said. “Trans kids deserve better.”
When the case to enforce a West Virginia law that bans males from female teams was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in January, Michael Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, said “biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable.”
“[Pepper-Jackson] says that West Virginia schools can no longer designate teams by looking to biological sex,” Williams said. “Instead, schools must place students on sports teams based on their self-identified gender.”
Criticizing that as “backwards logic,” Williams said it makes Title IX “into a law that actually denies those opportunities for girls.”
“The law is indifferent to gender identity because sports are indifferent to gender identity,” Williams said.
West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey said “it’s just plain wrong to allow a boy to participate and win a girls’ sporting event.”
Source: VidNews » Feed
