Who is Becky Pepper-Jackson? Transgender student's Supreme Court journey

Maureen Groppe, Zac Anderson and Erin Mansfield, USA TODAYTue, June 30, 2026 at 8:42 PM UTC

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Becky Pepper-Jackson's journey to the Supreme Court started from a young age.

It ended with a June 30 decision upholding West Virginia's law banning transgender girls from participating in female sports teams.

Pepper-Jackson, a West Virginia 10th-grader assigned male at birth, has lived publicly as a girl since the fourth grade. She takes puberty-delaying medication and estrogen and began her challenge to West Virginia's law when she was entering middle school.

Still, West Virginia argued Pepper-Jackson retained a physical advantage that, as a high school freshman, helped her place third in a state discus throwing competition and eighth in shot last year.

Because she received puberty-delaying medication and estrogen, Pepper-Jackson’s physical characteristics are typical of non-transgender girls, according to her lawyers.

Pepper-Jackson attributed her athletic achievements to hard work and practice and said her performance is "well within the range" of non-transgender girls her age.

“I play for my school for the same reason other kids on my track team do – to make friends, have fun, and challenge myself through practice and teamwork,” she said in a statement before the justices heard arguments in the case in January.

She also said the case was not just about sports but is “one part of a plan to push transgender people like me out of public life entirely.”

Her lawyer argued that the justices should send the case back to U.S. District Court for a trial to determine whether she has an advantage over teammates or rivals who were identified as girls at birth.

"And then we'll have the facts in front of us. And maybe they'll make the issue go away," Joshua Block, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented Pepper-Jackson, said in oral arguments. "I think it's unnecessary to, you know, intervene at this instance with a sweeping legal conclusion to something that might actually be a narrow factual dispute."

Michael Williams, the attorney for West Virginia, countered that state legislatures, not courts, have the primary responsibility for weighing evidence and making policy judgments in "areas of evolving science and medicine, especially involving children."

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Pepper-Jackson is the only transgender student in West Virginia who sought to participate on girls' teams.

The court's three liberals joined the six conservatives in ruling that the ban does not violate a federal law barring sex discrimination in education.

But in their partial dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Pepper-Jackson should have a chance to show that the ban should not apply to her.

"Because of the Court’s decision today, West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B. P. J. and others like her these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not," she wrote.

Block called the court's decision "heartbreaking," but said he was glad it didn't go further to limit transgender rights in other areas beyond sports.

“This was a loss, but it was a narrow loss, and the court balked at the more sweeping arguments made by the other side,” Block told reporters after the decision.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the court's decision, said federal rules governing sex discrimination in education recognize the "inherent physical differences between biological men and biological women − as well as the safety and competitive fairness concerns that would arise if males were allowed to compete in female sports."

But Kavanaugh also made a plea for respect for the transgender athletes who have been at the center of the contentious national debate.

"Those student athletes want to play sports. Their desire to compete warrants respect," he wrote. "No student-athlete on either side of the issues, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Becky Pepper-Jackson took transgender rights fight to Supreme Court

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