Even before Heather Jackson’s daughter, Becky, was old enough to walk, she was running. Their clan, which includes Jackson’s husband and two sons, is a family of runners, which Jackson views as their “zen time.” Becky is now 11, but even when she was an infant, Jackson says she would bring her daughter in the stroller with her, so she could accompany her mother on runs.
Much to Jackson’s delight, Becky joined in the family vocation when she was old enough to lace up her sneakers herself. “That means the world to a parent when their child takes interest in something that they do,” Jackson tells them. “It’s one more thing that you can bond with your child over.”
Becky was preparing to try out for sports at her West Virginia middle school when she learned that long-held dream may not be a reality. In April, the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, signed a bill banning trans female students from participating in sports in alignment with their gender identity. After House Bill 3293 was made law, Becky claims that a coach told her it would be “confusing” to allow her to compete in cross country with the other girls, according to a complaint filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The ACLU is suing on behalf of Becky’s family to overturn West Virginia’s trans sports ban, which follows similar legislation signed into law in seven other states. One of the most egregious things about the version of the bill put forward in West Virginia, according to Jackson, is that constituents weren’t even allowed in the legislature to testify against it. The West Virginia Capitol was locked down during the pandemic, and debates were largely closed to the public.
As Becky’s mother, Jackson says that watching HB 3293 be signed into law without her input as a parent instilled in her a sense of “helplessness.” “You want to help your children to attain what they want to make them happy,” she says. “I want my child to have equal protection and opportunities.”
West Virginia’s law is just one of several that are facing challenges from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups amid an unprecedented wave of legislative attacks on trans youth. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced legal action against Florida after its governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a watered-down version of one of America’s most controversial trans sports bans on the first day of Pride Month. ACLU and Lambda Legal have vowed that Texas will be met with a lawsuit if its legislature passes bills attacking trans youth access to athletics and gender-affirming care during an upcoming special session.
The Biden administration signaled its support for these suits by filing a brief last week calling West Virginia’s anti-trans law “unconstitutional,” while also calling on a court to strike down Arkansas’ ban on transition care for minors under the age of 18. But many advocates in West Virginia describe the state’s attack on trans athletics as an “opening shot,” believing the worst is still yet to come as Republicans begin to pre-file bills ahead of next year’s legislative session.
“I’m very emotional,” Ash Orr, chair of the Morgantown Human Rights Commission, tells them. “It really comes in waves. One minute, I am able to sit with it and the next minute, I’m crying. I’m in disbelief that it’s 2021 and we are fighting for basic rights. To have a government that’s so cavalier about risking the lives of trans individuals, it’s mind-blowing to me. It almost doesn’t seem real.”
The Wrong Side of a Border
When Evey Winters left West Virginia to begin her transition, she had no expectation at the time that being able to express her true gender would save her life. “I wanted people to know who I was when I died,” she recalls over the phone. “I had no hope that accessing transitional care was going to be good for me, that it was going to change anything for me, or that it was going to make my mental health better. I didn’t expect to see my 31st birthday.”
Finding gender-affirming care as a trans person in West Virginia is next to impossible, according to Winters. Currently, the state is one of 10 in the U.S. that blocks coverage for gender-affirming care under its Medicaid program, a policy that was met with a class-action lawsuit last year. But even for individuals who are covered under private insurance or able to pay out of pocket, Winters says there is so much “red tape” involved that the nearest provider that would prescribe her hormone replacement therapy (HRT) without making her “jump through a bunch of legal hoops” wasn’t even in West Virginia. The clinic was in Pittsburgh, a 4-hour drive away.
