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WASHINGTON — <\/span>WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Becky Pepper-Jackson<\/a> finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.<\/p>\n West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women’s sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court<\/a>, which has allowed multiple restrictions<\/a> on transgender people to be enforced in the past year. <\/p>\n The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox<\/a> challenged that state’s law.<\/p>\n Decisions are expected by early summer.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump’s Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans<\/a> from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people<\/a> from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.<\/p>\n Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s something that needs to be done,\u201d Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019m here to do because … this is important to me. I know it\u2019s important to other people. So, like, I\u2019m here for it.\u201d<\/p>\n She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.<\/p>\n Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.<\/p>\n She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl<\/a> since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court’s decision in June<\/a> upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.<\/p>\n Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,\u201d West Virginia’s attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women<\/a> from women’s sports after Trump signed an executive order<\/a> aimed at barring their participation.<\/p>\n The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll<\/a> conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults \u201cstrongly\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were \u201cstrongly\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.<\/p>\n