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1 1 (October 24, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govengg0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ______ ~ Research Service Regulating Gender in School Sports: An Overview of Legal Challenges to State Laws Updated October 24, 2023 Public debate over the participation of transgender women in women's sports has proliferated in recent years, raising questions of fairness in contexts ranging from the Olympics to elementary school sports teams. School districts and athletics associations typically regulate who can participate in their sports leagues, and many have implemented policies that allow students to participate on teams that align with their gender identity at some levels of competition. In the past few years, however, many states have passed laws preventing transgender women and girls from participating in women's interscholastic sports. These laws, which often state their purpose as protecting women's sports, function by limiting participation on sports teams based on the biological sex at birth of team members. Proponents of this legislation argue that male physiology confers inherent physical benefits and that biological females have a competitive disadvantage if biological males are allowed to play with or against them on women's teams. Transgender student-athletes and their parents have contested these laws and the underlying theories of fairness in several lawsuits across the country. Generally, these lawsuits claim that such laws violate Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX) and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This Legal Sidebar begins by explaining the constitutional and statutory bases for the legal challenges to policies and laws regulating gender in school sports. It then summarizes the approaches federal district and appellate courts have taken to these lawsuits across the country and describes the potential for Supreme Court involvement. The Sidebar concludes by identifying several considerations for Congress. Legal Context Equal Protection Clause Claims for Sex Discrimination The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause provides that no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. To withstand scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, a law may treat similarly situated persons differently only if there is a sufficient governmental reason to do so. Whether a governmental classification survives an equal protection challenge depends on the basis for the classification (i.e., who the law treats differently) and the Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10993 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress