Meet the West Virginian Middle School Student Challenging a Trans Sports Ban in Federal Court

A 13-year-old transgender girl in West Virginia was in a federal appeals court on Friday challenging a state law that prevents her from competing on her school’s track and field team for girls.

Becky Pepper-Jackson listened as lawyers argued her case before a panel of three judges at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. She is an 8th grader at Bridgeport Middle School in Bridgeport, West Virginia. She told NBC she is fighting in court to compete in the sport she loves.

“I want to keep going because this is something I love to do, and I’m not just going to give it up,” Pepper-Jackson said. “This is something I truly love, and I’m not going to give up for anything.”

The law in question, HB 3293 “Save Women’s Sports Act” was enacted in 2021 and later challenged by Pepper-Jackson and the ACLU. The law was upheld in January by a U.S. District Court Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, albeit with some reservations.

“I have no doubt that H.B. 3293 aimed to politicize participation in school athletics for transgender students,” Goodwin wrote in his decision earlier this year. “Nevertheless, there is not a sufficient record of legislative animus. Considering the law under the intermediate scrutiny standard, I find that it is substantially related to an important government interest.”

Pepper-Jackson challenged the ruling which was overturned on appeal earlier this year and the law has been blocked as the case winds its way through the courts. The case went before a panel of Circuit Judges G. Steven Agee, Pamela Harris, and Toby Heytens. Harris and Heytens, appointees of Presidents Obama and Biden respectively, appeared sympathetic to Pepper-Johnson’s arguments. However, Agee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, appeared skeptical.

“There’s no right to rank above people because of their transgender status, or their race or their religion unless there's something that makes the competition unfair,” Pepper-Jackson’s attorney, Joshua Block of the ACLY, argued in court on Friday according to Reuters.

“Biological sex dictates physical characteristics that are indisputably relevant to athletics,” West Virginia Solicitor General Lindsay See said in response.

Pepper-Jackson’s mother, Heather, laments the need to fight in court for her daughter to compete in sports as a trans girl.

“Politicians are out there fighting for votes, and they just jump on a bandwagon without ever researching it for themselves, when if people would just do their own research, the biology, and the science is out there to prove what we’re looking for,” Heather told NBC. “We just want to be accepted, and she just wants to be a kid. It shouldn’t be that hard to be a kid.”