Attorney General Alan Wilson asks U.S. Supreme Court to protect girls’ sports

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow states to pass laws that protect girls’ sports by ensuring that all participants are biological females. He joined 27 other attorneys general in filing friend-of-the-court briefs in two cases, from West Virginia and Idaho, that are now before the Court.

West Virginia and Idaho passed laws protecting girls’ sports, but those laws were struck down by the Fourth and Ninth Courts of Appeals. Both courts ruled that the state laws likely violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by not allowing biological males who identify as women to compete on sports teams reserved for women or girls. The Fourth Circuit also held that Title IX of the Civil Rights Act requires states to allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams consistent with their proclaimed gender identity.

“The important question here is, can states pass laws to protect girls? Title IX was passed to give them the same opportunities as boys to play sports, and I think we need to uphold that and protect girls in the locker rooms, pools, courts, and fields,” Attorney General Wilson said. “I think it’s hard to argue that the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX are not supposed to give equal protection to female athletes.”

In 2022, the South Carolina legislature passed the Save Women’s Sports Act, which is similar to West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws. South Carolina’s law uses biological sex at birth rather than gender identity to classify sports teams as girls’ or boys’.

Attorney General Wilson joined the amicus briefs, which were led by the attorneys general of Alabama and Arkansas, and joined by Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho (B.P.J. only), Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia (Hecox only), and Wyoming, and the U.S. Territory of Guam.

You can read the brief in Little v. Hecox here, and the brief in West Virginia v. B.P.J. here.