Little v. Hecox lawyer faces pressing question from Alito
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ruled on Tuesday in Little v. An attorney representing a biological male athlete in the Hecox case was questioned about the definitions of woman and girl.
Alito asked Kathleen R. Hartnett, who argued on behalf of the Idaho student in the Supreme Court case, what it means to be “a boy or a girl or a man or a woman” when it comes to equal protection purposes. Hartnett acknowledged that a school may have separate teams for “students classified as male and a category of student classified as female.” Hartnett also agreed that there needs to be “an understanding of what it means to be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman.”
CLICK HERE TO GET MORE SPORTS NEWS ON FOXNEWS.COM
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito testifies about the court’s budget at a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government on March 7, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“I’m sorry, I misunderstood your question. I think the underlying law, whatever it is, the policy, the law, to understand whether someone is excluded, we need to understand how the state or the government understands that term,” Hartnett said. “We do not have a definition for the court. We are not discussing the definition here.
“What we are saying means in practice categorically excluding men of their natal sex from women’s teams, and there is also a group of men of their natal sex for whom it does not make sense to do so in the state’s own interests.”
Alito then asked: “How can a court determine whether there is discrimination based on sex without knowing what sex means for equal protection?”
COUNCIL LEADER DESCRIBES TRANS ATHLETES AS ‘THE BIGGEST FORM OF BULLYING’ IN GIRLS’ SPORTS
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks to a crowd as protesters gather in front of the Supreme Court hearing arguments on state laws banning transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
“I think what we know here is, basically, according to their bylaws, Lindsay’s birth gender qualifies as male and she is categorically excluded from women’s teams by bylaws,” Hartnett said. “So we’re taking the definitions in the law as we find them, and we’re not challenging them. We’re just trying to understand, do they create equal protection issues?”
Alito then asked Hartnett a hypothetical question about a boy who has not taken any puberty blockers or other medications but believes he is a girl, and whether a school could say that boy cannot join a girls’ sports team.
Hartnett argued that the presumption was not what his side advocated.
The issue at hand is whether laws in Idaho and West Virginia discriminate based on gender by banning transgender athletes who identify as women from playing on teams that match their gender identity.
Little v. a biological man trying to compete on the women’s track and field and cross country teams at Boise State University. In the Hecox case, Idaho law argued that the Women’s Sports Fairness Act violated the equal protection clause by excluding transgender women.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FOX NEWS APPLICATION
Lawyers for states defending the bans argue that segregating sports based on biological sex protects fairness and safety for female athletes and is consistent with Title IX’s definition of sex.
Follow Fox News Digital Sports streaming on X and subscribe Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
