Big News: The Supreme Court Will Consider Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ

Both cases about whether women and girls are entitled to female-only sports

July 3, 2025

The biggest news this week is that on Tuesday, the Department of Education entered into an agreement with the University of Pennsylvania, requiring Penn to comply with Title IX by excluding male athletes from female-only sports and to define the words “male” and “female” accurately. Penn has agreed to take back the three titles it had awarded to Lia (Will) Thomas and apologize to the female athletes who were harmed by what happened to Penn women’s swimming during the 2021-2022 season. Good.

I attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School and could not be more pleased with this development. I have recorded a podcast episode about it, which will air at 3:00 p.m. Friday for paid subscribers. I was very pleased when Jan Crawford, the Chief Legal Correspondent at CBS News posted the story on X, quoting me:

---

Earlier today, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear two cases during its upcoming term that are of interest to those of us who care about women and girls as a sex class: Little, et al. v. Hecox, et al. and West Virginia, et al. v. B.P.J., et al.

Women’s Declaration International USA previously filed briefs in both cases, urging the Court to take this step (full disclosure: I represented WDI USA on the briefs). They are here and here. I’m quite pleased with this development too. Read on to learn more about the cases and why this is significant if you care about women and girls generally, and female athletes specifically.

Paid-only content follows. A paid subscription gets you regular access to much more content and the ability to comment and engage with other thoughtful people.