ONGOING CASES
B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education
FOURTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
On April 16, 2024, the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of the plaintiff, a middle school-aged trans athlete and held that a West Virginia law prohibiting trans students from participating equally in school sports violated Title IX. On November 18, 2024, the Supreme Court denied defendants’ petition for review.
The Title IX Cases
Red states have been in a performative uproar since the Biden Administration announced new trans-inclusive changes to Title IX, which will become effective on August 1, 2024. Twenty-six republican-led states have filed seven separate lawsuits against the Biden Administration, challenging this change.
Soule et al. v. Connecticut Assoc. of Schools et al.
DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT
In 2020, four cisgender female student athletes brought a lawsuit against their schools and two trans-female student athletes, alleging that the district’s trans-inclusive athletics policy violated Title IX by allowing “male-bodied” students to compete unfairly against “biological females.” The district court dismissed the case, and the Second Circuit reinstated it and remanded for further proceedings. The case pends now before the district court, where Defendants have moved to dismiss.
Kadel v. Folwell
FOURTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
VICTORY! On April 29, 2024, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a joint decision en banc in Kadel v. Folwell and Anderson v. Crouch, finding that healthcare plans that cover medically necessary treatments for certain diagnoses but bar coverage of those same medically necessary treatments for patients diagnosed with gender dysphoria violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.
Zinner v. Tennessee
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
Plaintiffs Gerda Zinner and Story VanNess brought suit against the State of Tennessee, alleging that the state’s public employee health benefits program unlawfully deprived both women of coverage for essential medical services because they are transgender.