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One of the Supreme Court’s final decisions of the year ruled against a pair of transgender student athletes. In a 6-3 ruling, the court said states can ban transgender women and girls from sports teams at schools that receive public funding, which nearly all schools do. NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin spoke to one family trying to figure out what the ruling means for them.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: I caught Abbott (ph), who’s 13, and his mom, Emily (ph), on the way out the door to baseball travel team tryouts.
EMILY: You not only do baseball. What else do you do?
ABBOTT: I do tennis, sailing and basketball. Yeah, and I do track and cross-country.
EMILY: Sports is what makes him happy.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Emily asked that NPR not use their last name because Abbott’s not out as transgender to everyone in their community. The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t affect him directly. He’s a transgender boy, for one, and he lives in Massachusetts, which allows him to play on boys’ teams. But he can’t help but think about what it would be like to live in a state with a ban.
ABBOTT: If that happened to me, I’d be really, really, really depressed and not – because I can’t play any sports. And then I’ll just stay home every single day doing nothing.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: The cases ruled on by the Supreme Court came from Idaho and West Virginia. They’re among the 27 states that ban trans students in girls’ sports. West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey shared an interview he did with MetroNews on social media.
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PATRICK MORRISEY: Now, in West Virginia and across the country, we can stand for these commonsense provisions that are going to allow women to safely participate in sports without worrying about biological males coming in and creating a ruckus.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Abbott’s mom, Emily, is an athlete herself – a champion rower – and her two daughters play sports, too. She’s more worried about what the ruling means for her daughters than for Abbott.
EMILY: I feel that it just is really opening the door to a lot more abuse and policing of women’s bodies. So it’s definitely not making women’s sports safer, in my opinion.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: She says she wasn’t surprised by the ruling.
EMILY: It could have been worse.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: The Supreme Court ruled specifically on girls’ school sports and didn’t get into broader issues. It also allows supportive states to continue to include trans students in sports. For Abbott in Massachusetts, even with the support of his state, he says he still hesitates to share with some teammates that he’s trans, afraid to lose a friendship.
EMILY: They might think you’re not a good player if they knew that you were trans.
ABBOTT: Or, like, I’m not a good person.
EMILY: Or not a good person.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: For now, even after the Supreme Court ruling, Abbott can keep playing, and with that, they’re off to baseball tryouts.
Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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