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Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador has been working on a case that could determine the future of women’s sports in America.
Last week the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Little vs. Hecox, which began in 2020 when Idaho became a forerunner for states with laws that ban trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports. A trans athlete at Boise State, Lindsay Hecox, sued the state to compete on the university’s women’s cross-country team.
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Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador speaks outside the Supreme Court on April 24, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho granted a preliminary injunction, blocking the law from being enforced because it found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving the law unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction, but now the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to intervene.
However, Labrador hopes for the Supreme Court to cast a decision with a wider impact than just letting one state carry out its own specific law on the issue. He wants a new national precedent. “I believe that that’s what they’re gonna do,” Labrador told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
“I think they’re going to have a big ruling on whether men can participate in women’s sports, and more importantly, how to determine whether transgender individuals are protected by the federal constitutions and state and federal laws.”
Labrador is tasked with choosing an attorney to argue on behalf of his state, and the entire “Save Women’s Sports” movement, in Supreme Court arguments.
The AG shared what he intends for that attorney to argue.
“The most important [argument] is that the 14th Amendment does not prevent a state from protecting its girls when it comes to participating in sports and that there’s no special classification that allows boys to participate in girls’ sports,” he said.
Labrador’s first exposure to the Little vs. Hecox case was when it was filed in 2020, three years before he was Idaho’s attorney general. He worked as legal counsel for the state in handling the case at the time, believing it was a matter of “common sense.”
However, Labrador also said he witnessed how the issue had not been fully understood by mainstream society. He puts blame on the “scientific community.”
“For a period of time, society wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it,” Labrador said.
“Somehow, the scientific community started finding these scientific evidence that there was no difference between a boy who was transitioning to a girl and a girl who was born a biological girl. And we just knew that was ridiculous, and that it was, it flew in the face of common sense, and I think now science and I think the debate has turned to a point where people realize they can speak freely of these issues.”
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Two years before Labrador took over as the state’s AG, two college students joined the defendant’s list.
Former Idaho State University women’s athletes Madison Kenyon and Mary Kate Marshall joined the lawsuit in 2021 as willing defendants after having to compete against a male during their college careers.
“My coach sat us down in the room and told us that we would be competing against a male athlete at a specific meet and just let us know. And I remember sitting there and kind of like, looking around the room being like, ‘Well, what do my teammates think about this? What do we do?’” Kenyon told Fox News Digital.
“So, for us, it was not a matter of whether I’m going to compete or not. I’m going to put everything out there that I have and see what happens. And sure enough, this male athlete beat me, beat all my teammates and that continued to happen the entire season. So, that’s when I said, ‘This isn’t fair.'”
Kenyon added that she felt the situation was “swept under the rug” when it first happened.
“I think a lot of people saw that this was obviously not fair and this isn’t going to last. And it was going to be a problem, and they didn’t act on it.”
Kenyon said she was then inspired to join the lawsuit from an assignment in her speech class at Idaho State, where she wrote a speech about a piece of legislation she wanted to support.
For Labrador, the support of young Idaho women was “supremely important” and costly to the women due to the common treatment of people who stand up and speak out on the issue by the opposing side.
“Society was not being kind to them, the local media was not being kind to them, they were getting a lot of peer pressured to cave on this issue, they were being called all sorts of names, ‘bigoted’ and other things,” Labrador said.
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Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador speaks outside the Supreme Court on April 24, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Labrador said he saw the same treatment befall the other families in his state who were affected when a trans athlete competed against their daughters in high school competition.
“The media tries to shame these families into silence and many times these families come out and speak out, but many times they just feel afraid to voice their opinions because of what the media does to them.” Labrador said.
Now, after years of widespread societal evolution on the issue, and political momentum from President Donald Trump and the GOP’s unanimous stance on the issue, a new federal precedent could come into effect as early as next year.
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