United States District Judge David Nye has rejected trans athlete Lindsay Hecox’s attempt to end his/her federal lawsuit, which has reached all the way up to the Supreme Court (where the Equal Protection Project filed an amicus brief).
This ruling demonstrates that good sportsmanship applies whether it is involved in skirmishes on the field or in the courtroom.
It all started in April 2020, when “Lindsay” Hecox, a university student in Idaho, brought a lawsuit challenging the state’s “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”
This law restricts sports participation on women’s college sports teams to women, a completely noncontroversial prospect for anyone who doesn’t rely on TikTok for their science education or political philosophy.
But Hecox, a biological male (also known as a male), wanted to compete on the women’s track and cross country teams.
After several rounds of litigation at a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, both of which concluded the law violated Hecox’s right to equal protection, the case reached the Supreme Court.
And unlike most petitions to the high court, the case was granted for review (which requires the vote of at least four of the nine justices). Clearly, the Court is ready and willing to take this issue on and settle the matter definitively.
Apparently, Hecox was so fired up about his/her case being heard at the Supreme Court, they even agreed to “stay” all proceedings in the district court while the high court was deciding, in order to make sure the case would proceed.
But Hecox, represented by the ACLU, has now filed a motion with the district court to voluntarily dismiss their case. In other words, after getting the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and making sure it would be undisturbed, he/she now wants the whole thing to go away.
Of course, the obvious question is what could possibly have changed between the start of the case and the present that would cause Hecox to perform such a dramatic one-eighty. Why, after fighting for years to get their case to the Supreme Court would he/she now decide to drop the matter?
The answer is obvious: United States v. Skrmetti, in which the Court rejected the precise kinds of equal protection arguments Hecox plans to make, and concluded a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender kids (also known as mentally ill kids) was perfectly constitutional.
In other words, Hecox saw the writing on the wall and is now trying to game the system and keep the justices away from rendering the same kind of decision in his/her case and preventing men from playing on women’s sports teams.
Enter Judge Nye.
In his opinion rejecting Hecox’s attempt to withdraw the case, Judge Nye takes him/her to task by noting: “Hecox agreed to a stay of all proceedings in this case. She [sic] cannot escape the realities of that agreement (or the impact of the Court’s order) simply because she [sic] has had a change of heart.”
The court also notes that while “[l]itigation involves strategy,” that strategy “should not overshadow impartiality and justice.”
Instead, as the court notes, the State of Idaho has defended this case vigorously for years and it would be fundamentally unfair to abandon the issue now on the eve of a final resolution.
Of course, it is still up to the Supreme Court whether it will allow the case to proceed or allow Hecox to bow out. But Judge Nye’s ruling is a step in the right direction.
The Supreme Court should allow the case to proceed and protect women’s sports.
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Timothy R. Snowball is a Senior Attorney at the Equal Protection Project.
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