Federal Judge Strikes Down Idaho Ban on Transgender Athletes Competing in Women’s Sports

A federal judge has blocked an Idaho law that forbids transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports.

The “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act”, passed in March, stated that transgender women and girl athletes couldn’t play on a women’s sports team without first verifying their “internal and external reproductive anatomy”–if it was disputed.

The act in question was challenged in court by a transgender cross-country athlete Lindsay Hecox of Boise State University and an unnamed cisgender minor who feared that she might have to go under physical examination of her reproductive parts to prove her gender due to her masculine physique.

Judge David Nye in his ruling agreed that putting anyone under that kind of sexual scrutiny is both unfair and humiliating.

Nye’s ruling is not the final say in allowing transgender women and girls to participate in women’s sports, but it will serve as an important precedent in determining its constitutionality.

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