By Ann Rostow—
And So Begins Another Year at SCOTUS
On Tuesday morning, January 13, 2026, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging laws against transgender athletes. One case involved a woman named Lindsay Hecox, who was barred from the Boise State University track team in 2019 after the state of Idaho passed a bill prohibiting transwomen from playing organized sports. Hecox sued and was allowed to play, thanks to a federal ruling in her favor, but she failed to make either the soccer team or the track team. After a two-year break from school, Hecox returned to Boise State with in-state tuition, joined the women’s club soccer team and tried out again for track. Oh, and for the record, she had already taken a year of whatever hormones the NCAA required for transgender sportswomen.
In 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overruled the Idaho court and reinstated the Idaho law, ruling that the law could not be applied to Hecox while she was still litigating the case. Hecox appealed the Ninth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court, but, last September, Hecox withdrew her appeal. Now 25 years old, Hecox said in a statement the she was afraid “that if I continue my lawsuit, I will personally be subjected to harassment that will negatively impact my mental health, my safety, and my ability to graduate as soon as possible.”
I’m sure I reported all these details to you at the time, right? I seem to recall that I remained in command of every twist and turn in the Byzantine paths taken by our transgender legal allies last year. What were they up to again? Oh, the right to military service, the right to youth healthcare and access to hormones, the right to a legitimate passport, the right to use a public bathroom, the right to use high school facilities, basically the right to exist.
To be honest, I did lose some of Lindsay’s machinations in the chaos of it all. But here’s the weird part: the state of Idaho turned around and begged the justices to keep the case on the docket even though Hecox withdrew it. That’s obviously because it’s pretty clear to everyone with a working brain cell or two that this Court will almost certainly rule against transgender women, just as they ruled against transgender youth.
Indeed, the Court doesn’t even need Hecox (although, of course, they kept her abandoned case alive) because they have another sports lawsuit. Becky Pepper-Jackson is a West Virginia girl who has been trans since she was a small child. Her supportive parents noticed her feminine instincts from an early age, when she insisted on dresses and dolls. Starting in third grade she presented as a girl in school, and, in sixth grade, she began an estrogen therapy that allowed her to avoid male puberty.
(In the murky science of gender transition, one thing is clear. And that’s the negative effect of going through male puberty as a transgender girl. Transwomen can mitigate the impact with female hormones after the fact, but it’s far better to avoid male puberty in the first place.)
When Becky tried to join her middle school track team, she learned that the state had just passed an anti-trans sports law, which is particularly noteworthy since elsewhere I’ve read that Pepper-Jackson is the only recognized transgender athlete in the state. (I should really confirm that before I put it in writing. I’ll check later.) The family sued, and the law was put on hold by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Subsequently, Pepper-Jackson has been on her school track team, focusing on shot put and discus. Now a sophomore, she is good but, at times, beatable.
Well, naturally the Coal State lawyers appealed the Fourth Circuit decision to the High Court and here we are. Although we won’t get a ruling until next spring or late June, we gained a sense of how the Court feels from reporters in the room during arguments. Why don’t you guess their overall impressions?
One more thing. I was reading a Washington Post article on the Pepper-Jackson case, and I was shocked by the comments. I glanced at the first two dozen, and these supposedly liberal readers were almost unified in their opposition to transgender women in sports. Moreover, their hostility was not based on science or transition issues, but more frequently based on a simplistic notion that, if you’re born male, you’re male, period. Quite a few people wrote, eyes rolling, that the Democrats were insane to raise this issue that sunk them in 2024—as if Democrats brought these cases to the Supreme Court.
I Still Remember Dan Quayle
I’ve been refreshing and going back to my news pages, in search of more Supreme Court dirt. There, I’ve encountered many intriguing stories that do not relate to transgender girls or anything GLBT, for that matter. Still, aren’t you intrigued to learn about the best way to cook baked potatoes?
I mean I never thought baked potatoes were complicated enough to merit their own clickbait headline. Do we need tips on how to boil an egg or make a piece of toast? At the same time, I wondered if there was something I didn’t understand about potato baking.
Reader, I clicked.
It turned out that many people (by implication) were wrapping their potatoes in foil before they baked them. I am not guilty of this error in judgment because I am too lazy to bother with foil, and it didn’t occur to me in the first place. I just stab my potatoes with a sharp knife, throw them in the oven, hit 350, and set a timer for an hour and a half. The people who use foil are accidentally steaming their potatoes and making them mushy and gross. I wonder, however, how the authors of this helpful note learned that most people were using foil to begin with. I think that’s a false assumption. I also learned that, if you put a little oil and salt on the potatoes, the skin will be crispier. Okay then!
Actors Behaving Badly
The other big digression was the search for “Timothy Busfield,” whom I had never heard of. Was this a murder case? Missing person? It only took a couple of seconds to learn that he was a semi-famous actor accused of molesting pre-pubescent children. Normally I’d leave it at that, but I didn’t recognize Mr. Busfield and I read he was on West Wing. Really? I then had to look up the cast of West Wing, where I discovered this creepo was Danny the journalist who had a crush on Allison Janney and gave her a goldfish. I sort of liked him! Anyway, I guess he went into hiding once his dark sins emerged into the light. Oh, and he is married to Melissa Gilbert, who formerly starred on Little House on the Prairie and is the sister of out gay actress Sara Gilbert.
After these brief sidebars, I returned to GLBT news and learned, among other things, that the gay ice hockey series Heated Rivalry is a big underground hit in Russia, where discussion or promotion of anything gay is against the law. The draconian rules against the rainbow community are about as harsh as you will find anywhere in the world. I don’t think the death penalty is on the table, but I don’t think a gay homicide victim would get much sympathy either.
Heated Rivalry is about two players, a Canadian and a Russian, who are rivals on two different NHL teams. Under the radar, however, the two are having a passionate affair. Based on a novel, the show was picked up by HBO last fall and renewed for a second season last month. In an article in Vanity Fair, a Russian expatriate who now lives in the U.S. described a gay community in hiding, hungry for access to the rest of the world, but consigned to pirate services and secret streaming apps, thanks to Russian blackouts of Western media. It’s looking more and more like Mel and I are going to have to add yet another monthly bill to our growing list of subscriptions. It’s overwhelming, but now we must have HBO.
Outrage Transcends Orientation
My inbox is filled with articles about the ICE murder victim, Renée Good, who was married to Becca Good, with whom she had a son. Part of me thinks that Good’s sexual orientation is tangential to the situation. She was killed by a right-wing MAGA brute, infuriated by a woman who ignored his commands. The killer represented a lawless force of what I’d call mercenaries, who have been given the power to rough up and kidnap our neighbors without warning or warrant. Now, they seem to be adding murder to the list of sanctioned activities. Good was not killed for being gay. She was killed for disrespecting a violent and insecure loser, who was released onto the streets of Minneapolis with a gun and no restraints.
Will this break the camel’s back? We will see. But that said, it appears that the continued attacks on Renée Good’s character by our government may be fueled by homophobia. I gather that six prosecutors out of the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office have resigned rather than launch an investigation into Becca Good’s “activist” ties. Yes, we’re talking about Renée Good’s wife, who, as far as I’ve read, was only an activist in the sense that she and her wife opposed ICE policies and joined the many protests against the rabid immigration crackdowns. The Department of Justice is now targeting Becca, presumably to paint a picture of the family as domestic terrorists. Domestic terrorists, as you may have noticed, are now defined as anyone opposed to Trump and his incoherent power plays. Welcome to the club.
Is there any doubt that anyone now reading this column or this newspaper would be labeled an enemy of the state were they to find themselves in trouble with the government? Even straight allies would be vulnerable, just as citizen allies of immigrants to this country might now designated as traitors or criminals.
The six prosecutors resigned for two reasons. First, the Justice Department refused to launch a civil rights investigation into Good’s death at the hands of a federal agent. Instead, they began looking into the Good family ties to anti-ICE protestors. Second, the Department ordered the U.S. Attorneys to open a case against Becca Good, an order they refused to follow. And it was likely an order that was bolstered by the Trump administration’s war on the LGBT community. To be accurate, none of these lawyers provided any explanation to the press, but these are logical assumptions, based on the context.
Happy Ending
With our last few words, I have an interesting story out of Alexandria, Virginia, where a gay man was verbally and physically attacked by a woman while he was shopping for groceries on Christmas Day. The incident, in which the woman told him, “Boy, get out of here with your gay ass,” was posted on TikTok, but, for reasons unclear, I couldn’t see the video without wasting fifteen minutes on the effort.
Normally, this wouldn’t make the news. But police were called to the store and a report was filed as required under Alexandria’s new hate crime rules, which aim to stem an increase in hate crimes that started in 2019. The increase stabilized last year with a slight dip.
The woman, 34-year-old Shibritney Colbert of Landover, Maryland, left the store before she could be arrested, but was later tracked down and extradited to Virginia to face the consequences of her actions. She was charged with assault, but I don’t have details. I was just pleasantly surprised that the attack, on a man she had never met or seen before, was dealt with so decisively.
“Hate crimes are not just crimes against individuals,” said Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire. “They are offenses that threaten the entire community and undermine the fundamental principles of dignity, equality, and safety.” Wow. I haven’t heard that kind of talk for a while. I’ve missed it.
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on January 15, 2026
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