Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in on a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s ban on transgender people from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.

The 2020 law hasn’t gone into effect as the challenge has gone through the court system.

Labrador and the conservative Christian legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom on Thursday filed a petition to the nation’s highest court, asking it to take the case from the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The lawyers are also asking for the court to take up a similar case coming out of West Virginia and the Fourth District U.S. Court of Appeals.

“It makes eminent sense to resolve the equal protection and Title IX challenges to laws like Idaho’s and West Virginia’s in one fell swoop rather than addressing those issues in separate cases heard in separate terms,” the filing said.

Idaho in 2020 became the first state in the nation to bar transgender girls and women from participating on girls and women’s sports teams, from elementary to collegiate levels. The law also includes a “sex verification process,” in which anyone may dispute the sex of a female student-athlete and require them to go through a medical examination to verify their biological sex. Male athletes would not have this process.

The law was challenged by Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox and a then-Boise High School cisgender soccer player who was concerned about being subjected to the sex verification process. The ACLU of Idaho and Legal Voice are representing the two athletes.

“Idaho’s ban alienates and stigmatizes transgender women and girls. It also harms all women and girls, potentially subjecting them to invasive pelvic examinations, just for the ability to participate in female sports,” ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León wrote in an email.

“The Ninth Circuit was clear that transgender athletes face irreparable harm as a result of this ban that not only targets and discriminates against transgender women and girls, but all women and girls. This ban is designed to alienate and stigmatize transgender people and we’ll gladly make the case to the Court that they should leave the Ninth Circuit’s thorough opinion in place. By appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Idaho Attorney General is wasting taxpayer resources in its misguided effort to weaken protections for transgender women and girls in our state.”

In August 2023, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction on Idaho’s law, which blocked it from going into effect. The decision upheld an injunction placed by a U.S. district court judge in 2020. The Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the lower court’s decision that the petitioners were likely to succeed in their claim that the law violated the equal protection clause.

The injunctions serve as temporary blocks while the lawsuit makes its way through the court.

One of the bill’s authors, Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, told the Idaho Press following the 2023 decision that she was happy to see the lawsuit move along in the legal process.

“From the beginning, I always knew that this legislation was headed to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Ehardt said at the time. “I’m ecstatic to finally have a decision on this legislation from the Ninth Circuit so we can move forward in our fight to protect opportunities for our female athletes.”

Labrador’s filing argues that the Ninth Circuit decision split from other decisions in different circuit courts on similar issues, and asks that the high court to weigh in on legal questions such as the definition of sex and if transgender individuals fall into a protected class. The state’s lawyers contend that they do not and that sex can only be defined in biological terms regarding sex assigned at birth.

“Idaho is committed to ensuring that women and girls get a fair shot on and off the field,” Labrador said in a press release. “While we’ve been protecting fair and equal athletic competition and opportunities, activists have been pushing a radical social agenda that sidelines women and girls in their own sports.”