Nos. 24-751 and 24-752 In the Supreme Court of the United States ─────────────

── LINDSAY HECOX, et al., Respondents,
v.
RYAN LITTLE, et al., Petitioners. ───────────────
On Writs of Certiorari to the United States Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and Fourth Circuits ───────────────
BRIEF OF Richard Tabor, M.A., CITIZEN ADVOCATE, AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS ───────────────
Richard Tabor, M.A.Citizen Advocate Farmington Hills, MI [email protected] 31, 2025
─────────────── Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37.6, no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part, and no person other than amicus curiae made any monetary contribution to its preparation or submission.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Interest of Amicus Curiae ..................................................... 1 Summary of Argument ........................................................... 2 Argument ....................................................................... 4 I. EQUAL PROTECTION: FACT AND FIT ....................................... 4 II. INSTITUTIONAL LEGITIMACY: EMPIRICAL INTEGRITY ........................ 10 III. PRAGMATIC HARMS AND YOUTH NARRATIVES FAVOR INCLUSION ................ 15 Conclusion and Prayer for Relief .............................................. 22 Rule 37.6 Certification and Signature ......................................... 24

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Cases Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020) ................................. 17, 31, 49 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) ................................. 33 Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993) ............. 35 Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) .............................. 42 Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) .......................................... 33, 42 L.W. v. Skrmetti, 83 F.4th 456 (6th Cir. 2025) .................................... 30 Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) ............................................ — Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) ........................................ 33, 42 Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996) ............................................... 35, 38 United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996) .................................... 17, 29
Statutes & Constitutional Provisions U.S. Const. amend. XIV ............................................................. passim 20 U.S.C. § 1681 (Title IX) ........................................................ 29, 31
Other Authorities Nat’l Insts. of Health, MedlinePlus Genetics: Intersex (2023) ................... 18 Endocrine Soc’y, Scientific Statement on Sex and Gender Diversity (2023) ........ 18 Am. Acad. of Pediatrics, Policy Statement (2022, reaff. 2025) .................... 18 Int’l Olympic Comm., Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination (2025) 30 FIFA, Regulations on Eligibility for Gender-Diverse Athletes (2023) ............. 30 W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., Bureau for Behavioral Health (FOIA Resp. Sept. 30, 2025) .................... 27, 41 The Trevor Project, National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health (2025) ......... 44 GLSEN, National School Climate Survey (2023) .................................... 43

Amicus Curiae Brief in Support of Respondents Little v. Hecox/West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2025 Term)Submitted by: Richard Tabor, M.A., Citizen Advocate INTERESTS OF AMICUS CURIAE Amicus is a citizen advocate promoting human dignity and equal protection through deliberate choices in a probabilistic legal landscape. This brief offers unique youth-focused insights on mental health impacts and societal stakes of transgender sports bans, pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37. No party or counsel authored or funded this brief.Summary of Argument This case asks whether a State may enforce a categorical “biological sex” rule that compels a fiction science has long abandoned and then uses that fiction to exclude transgender students from school sports. The Constitution does not permit law to stand on what science has already left behind. Modern biology recognizes that sex-related traits—chromosomes, hormones, receptors, and anatomy—do not fall into a single, administrable binary; where law ceases to regulate fact, it begins to legislate mythology. Because the State’s rule neither matches empirical reality nor fits its stated interests, it fails equal protection review, undermines Title IX’s promise of equal educational opportunity, and inflicts dignity harms on children that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids. The questions that follow are therefore not abstract—they trace the line where fact and constitutional principle meet. This brief also situates the Court within the full anatomy of the Republic: the citizens as the nervous system sending pain signals; amici as the mind interpreting those signals into knowledge; the judiciary as the seat of constitutional consciousness integrating perception into reason; and the State as the immune system whose reflexes must defend the body politic without turning against it. This brief asks the Court to act as constitutional consciousness: to receive the Republic’s pain signals from children and families (the nervous system), but to decide through the disciplined interpretation supplied by the judicial mind—amici, the record, and settled science. Equal Protection and Title IX operationalize this discipline. When the Court centers verified interpretation over reflex, it restores constitutional maturity: law acting on truth rather than on dogma or noise. I. The State’s Premise Is Empirically Indefensible and Constitutionally Untenable. A government classification that depends on an empirically false predicate cannot satisfy the Equal Protection Clause. The Court’s Brandeis Mandate—its duty to test legislation against fact, not belief—requires acknowledging that the statutes’ binary presumption is scientifically obsolete. Law cannot compel what nature does not define. II. The Bans Fail Heightened Scrutiny and Impose a Hostile Climate Tax. Even if a legitimate objective existed, these laws fail intermediate scrutiny. They are both overbroad and under-inclusive, excluding youth who pose no competitive risk while ignoring far greater natural performance disparities among cisgender athletes. Their enforcement imposes measurable fiscal and human costs: West Virginia’s own records show youth therapy expenditures up 56 percent since 2018—a quantifiable Hostile Climate Tax. Equal Protection forbids policies that harm citizens and public systems alike. In constitutional terms, a State’s protective reflex must target real harms, not healthy children; a categorical ban that attacks its own students functions like an autoimmune response—misdirected defense that injures the body it exists to protect. III. Exclusion Violates Substantive Due Process and Institutional Legitimacy. To demand that non-binary or intersex youth conform to a physically impossible standard is to criminalize biology and conscience. Such compulsion offends the liberty of self-definition and bodily integrity. The judiciary’s legitimacy depends on its capacity for constitutional maturity—the humility to correct doctrinal fictions when empirical truth renders them untenable. When the State mistakes reflex for protection, it behaves as an autoimmune system—attacking the very citizens it was designed to defend. When the Court acts with reasoned intent, integrating evidence, precedent, and dignity, it restores both constitutional fidelity and public trust.ARGUMENT EQUAL PROTECTION: FACT AND FIT The Equal Protection Clause forbids state action that classifies on the basis of sex without an exceedingly persuasive justification (United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)). Modern biology now shows why such justification is impossible: sex is not a single binary trait but a constellation of chromosomal, hormonal, gonadal, and receptor characteristics that often diverge. NIH (2023) estimates intersex variations in roughly one in 1,500 births, and both the Endocrine Society (2023) and AAP (2022) affirm this multifactorial model. Law built on a mythical binary cannot meet constitutional scrutiny.The State’s predicate is scientifically indeterminate. Consensus statements from leading medical bodies acknowledge no single determinant of “biological sex.” Traits align along spectrums, and atypical configurations (including intersex conditions and receptor-variance phenotypes) are well documented. When the government selects one trait, freezes it as dispositive, and commands all others to yield, it abandons fit for assumption. That mismatch is fatal even at rational-basis review and cannot survive any heightened scrutiny. See, e.g., United States v. Virginia (means–end fit must be real, not hypothesized).A concrete example illustrates the error. Individuals with an XY karyotype and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) develop female anatomy, cannot respond to testosterone, and follow puberty trajectories comparable to other girls. During adolescence, hormonal systems and receptor sensitivities are still maturing—small timing differences can produce wide variance across all youth, cisgender and transgender alike. The State’s categorical rule ignores biology in motion, treating development as destiny and punishing variation itself. The Constitution does not permit the government to compel children to live under an identity the facts themselves refute, and then punish them for the State’s enforced misclassification. Compelled misidentification is not equal treatment.While Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), addressed Title VII, its reasoning that discrimination “because of sex” encompasses gender identity informs both Equal Protection and Title IX analysis. Inclusion advances public trust in the judiciary’s neutrality by adhering to Equal Protection’s evidentiary demands and textual fidelity, consistent with Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). Bans in Little v. Hecox (Idaho H.B. 500, approximately 1,800 trans youth may face exclusion, CDC 2019) and West Virginia v. B.P.J. fail heightened scrutiny, showing discriminatory intent (legislative debates, ACLU 2020-2025). Like Brown v. Board, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), this dignity lineage stands alongside the animus line of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); and Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). This Court has long recognized that equal protection requires more than formal neutrality. And where a statute’s predicate (“biological sex” as a rigid, binary classifier) conflicts with modern medical understanding of sex as multi-factorial, the State’s tailoring fails twice: it is a poor empirical fit and an over-intrusive mandate on students’ identity and bodily privacy. Laws that single out marginalized youth for exclusion, even under claims of fairness, perpetuate stigma and compound harm. In Brown, the Court struck down segregation not merely for unequal facilities but because separation itself inflicted dignity harms. Likewise here, exclusion from school sports denies trans youth the equal status and opportunity that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees.Because school athletics are part of an educational program, categorical exclusion conflicts with Title IX’s guarantee of equal educational opportunity. 20 U.S.C. § 1681.Federal nondiscrimination, per Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966), overrides state policies driven by animus (Romer). Unlike L.W. v. Skrmetti (6th Cir. 2025), sports bans lack health justification and trigger sex-based scrutiny (United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)). States’-rights arguments yield to federal nondiscrimination (Romer); reliance on Skrmetti overlooks that sports bans lack any medical rationale.Fairness to cisgender girls does not require exclusion. NCAA (2025), IOC (2025), and FIFA (2023) report no youth-level competitive advantage post-therapy, and bans harm all athletes via scrutiny (Gender Justice 2025). Critics may claim inclusion destroys women’s sports, but NCAA (2025), IOC (2025), and FIFA (2023) confirm no youth advantage, and 175+ cis athletes support inclusion (Women’s Sports Foundation 2020). Policies should protect all girls; inclusion with guardrails does so while avoiding stigma. Critics may fear inclusion allows unrestricted male participation; in fact, eligibility policies require objective criteria that ensure competitive fairness. Some raise desistance claims; the relevant question for schools is present identity and eligibility under policy, not speculative future change. Exclusion harms team dynamics and belonging, with qualitative evidence from school-climate surveys and athlete testimonials indicating degraded cohesion and participation. Global bodies like FIFA (2023) and IOC (2025) support youth inclusion, aligning with NCAA and countering elite-focused bans (World Athletics 2023, inapplicable). Consensus, including non-advocacy studies (Taylor & Francis April 2025), shows 20-30% lower depression/anxiety in inclusive settings (Trevor Project June 2025). II. INSTITUTIONAL LEGITIMACY: EMPIRICAL INTEGRITY The Court’s legitimacy rests on disciplined neutrality. Upholding a law grounded in an empirically false predicate would erode confidence that decisions are guided by evidence and constitutional principle rather than ideology. Multiple national surveys over 2024–2025 reflect significant concern about partisanship in major institutions. Safeguarding minority rights can strengthen legitimacy even when headline polling is mixed, as in Bostock. The Court’s legitimacy does not rest on following majority opinion but on ensuring that constitutional guarantees remain intact for all. When the Court protects vulnerable groups against discriminatory majoritarian laws, it demonstrates fidelity to principle rather than politics. Inclusion here affirms that the Equal Protection Clause safeguards trans youth even when state legislatures, or even segments of the public, resist their dignity. Inclusion upholds trust by protecting minorities, as in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020). A textual reading of Equal Protection, reinforced by this Court’s own precedent in Fulton v. Philadelphia (2021), supports inclusion as a matter of doctrinal consistency. Constitutional guarantees of liberty and equality, properly construed, balance conscience rights with the prevention of concrete harm. Public views are mixed; the Court’s legitimacy rests on constitutional principle, not polling. Protecting trans youth’s dignity ensures fairness for all students, a public priority (Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)). III. PRAGMATIC HARMS AND YOUTH NARRATIVES FAVOR INCLUSION The Court’s interpretive responsibility requires reading Equal Protection in light of real-world impacts. When a statute forces growing youth—whose biological traits are still developing and variable—to conform to a fixed adult binary, it collapses both science and fairness. Upholding such laws would erode confidence that constitutional interpretation remains responsive to fact and human experience. Equal Protection does not permit sex-based sports classifications that operate as proxies for gender-identity exclusion. The Court’s reasoning in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), reinforces that point; these bans also lack pragmatic justification (Fulton). Some may argue inclusion forces religious schools to violate beliefs, but Fulton limits exemptions when harm to youth occurs (Williams Institute 2025). Bans show animus, like in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, 584 U.S. 617 (2018), targeting trans youth (Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996)). Animus-driven exclusions lack any persuasive evidence of benefit and only impose costs. School districts already face stretched budgets; channeling resources into exclusionary enforcement — investigations, disputes, litigation — drains funds better spent on student learning and well-being. These West Virginia figures (2018–2025) reflect rising therapy expenditures—the “Hostile Climate Tax.” That is the fiscal signature of an autoimmune reflex in governance: misdirected enforcement that inflames the very systems it is sworn to safeguard, rather than neutralizing any demonstrated threat. That fiscal burden, alongside student dignity harms, undermines Title IX’s guarantee of equal educational opportunity, 20 U.S.C. § 1681. By contrast, inclusive policies reduce conflict, improve academic performance, and cut down on mental health burdens, aligning constitutional duty with pragmatic governance. Critics may label cost estimates speculative; national estimates (e.g., Williams Institute 2025) align with non-advocacy studies (e.g., Taylor & Francis April 2025). Bans increase distress (e.g., higher suicide-attempt risk and self-harm measures), with modeled fiscal impacts including national-level estimates and state-scale ranges (Williams Institute). Bans cause $50,000-$100,000/year funding losses from reduced participation (NEA 2023). Exclusion leads to 0.2-0.4 GPA drops for trans youth, affecting team dynamics and community sports programs (GLSEN 2023).Title IX guarantees equal educational opportunity. Exclusionary sports rules reduce participation, worsen school climate, and impose tangible fiscal burdens. West Virginia’s own 2018–2025 records show youth therapy costs rising roughly 56 percent across the period. State-confirmed cost growth is not advocacy spin; it is the public ledger of harm. Policies that produce stigma, depress participation, and drive support costs cannot be reconciled with Title IX’s promise or with constitutional means–end reasonableness. Equal opportunity and basic institutional stewardship point in the same direction: inclusion.Critics may call narratives like Hecox’s and B.P.J.’s “sob stories,” but their measurable harms ($3,750-$4,500 therapy, Medicaid 2025) reflect animus-driven exclusion (Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996)). Narratives illustrate harm: Lindsay Hecox’s exclusion from college running, causing severe depression ($3,750-$4,500/year therapy, Medicaid 2025; $15,000-$30,000 scholarship loss, NCAA 2024), reflects animus-driven discrimination, violating Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996). B.P.J., a 14-year-old excluded from track, faced isolation ($4,500/year therapy; Trevor Project: acceptance cuts suicide by 14%), a harm stemming from animus, violating Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996). A Boise parent reported their trans child required increased therapy after exclusion reflecting sex-based discrimination under Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020). CONCLUSION AND PRAYER FOR RELIEF The questions presented by the State of West Virginia are not administrative; they are constitutional and existential. The Court has been presented with an uncontroverted record: that the State’s foundational premise of a rigid sexual binary is a scientific fiction.The challenged laws inflict measurable, quantifiable harm upon the youth they claim to govern (the “Hostile Climate Tax”), fail to achieve their stated objective (competitive fairness), and compel citizens to live under a biologically impossible standard (Due Process violation).The ultimate question before this Court is not one of policy, but of cognition: Will the judiciary act from reflex—upholding a doctrine merely because it is familiar—or from reason, guided by evidence, fidelity to constitutional text, and the humility to correct doctrinal fictions?Constitutional maturity demands the latter. The Court must choose law as a living instrument of truth, not a vessel for dogma.The judgment below should be AFFIRMED, and the Court should rule that the laws in question violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.