Transgender Sports

Tracy Transon was a transgender individual who had undergone surgery to go from being a male to a female in the spring semester of her senior year of high school. Throughout high school she played on the boys’ varsity basketball team, earning All-Region and Second Team All-State Honors as a power forward. Her family told her that after she turned 18, she could make the decision to undergo a gender reassignment surgery. At the end of her senior basketball season, and after her 18th birthday, she and her family made the decision for her to undergo the surgery necessary to change her gender. She was accepted into the University of Georgia for the 1996 fall semester and began attending the school that fall. Her love of basketball continued and she wanted to play at the university, believing that she could play at the Division 1 level with her 6’6 height and 225-pound weight, along with all of her high school men’s basketball accolades. Once her gender transformation surgery was completed, she wanted to join the University’s women’s varsity team and play with what she felt was her gender. She was told that she would have to try out for and play with the men’s varsity team instead of the women’s varsity team because of an NCAA rule that states that “A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.” Tracy believed that she was being discriminated against because of her minority status and she felt insulted being held out from the girl’s team and being forced to continue her career in basketball by joining a girls team that would have to change be considered mixed or having to join the men’s team. She decided to sue the NCAA on the grounds of the Title IX clause and the equal protection rights of the 14th amendment to force the NCAA to let her play, and also for compensation for the emotional trauma that the ordeal caused her. She lost her case in the district court, and after appealing to the circuit courts the decision was upheld. She decided to take her case to the Supreme Court and received a Writ of Certiorari to have her case heard by the Supreme Court.