Editor’s note: The following statement was released recently by the Alliance Defending Freedom. It is unknown, at present, whether ADF has been asked to assist Mid Vermont Christian School in its appeal of the VPA decision banning them from future tournament play due to its forfeit of a girl’s basketball game in which the opposition featured a biological male, transgender player. ADF also has represented a Connecticut girl in her struggle for equal treatment under the law.

Alliance Defending Freedom and the West Virginia Attorney General have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court injunction that blocks West Virginia’s women’s sports law.

The request involves the case B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education, and is the first of its kind to come before the U.S. Supreme Court. It could result in a landmark decision that helps protect fairness for female athletes across the country.

Biological differences between males and females matter in sports. Female athletes have fought long and hard for equal opportunities, and they deserve to compete on a fair and level playing field. 

West Virginia and 17 other states have enacted laws that protect women and girls from having to compete against males. That exemplifies the type of respect and dignity that every woman deserves.

Here’s how we got to this moment.

In January, a federal district court upheld West Virginia’s law, rejecting a legal challenge from the ACLU. The male athlete in the case then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, asking the court to temporarily halt enforcement of the law so the athlete could try out for a girls’ track team in the spring. 

Days later, the 4th Circuit granted the request without providing any legal or factual basis for its decision. We’re asking the Supreme Court to vacate the 4th Circuit’s decision and allow West Virginia’s duly enacted women’s sports law to take full effect.

If the law ignores biological reality, girls and women get hurt. They already have been. And more girls will be harmed if laws like West Virginia’s are not upheld. Their harms should not be forgotten, discounted, or dismissed.

When males are allowed to compete in women’s sports, they routinely displace women and girls, robbing them of their constitutionally protected right to equal opportunity and victories they’ve worked so hard for.