This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and it's about sports, but it's also about a lot more.

The bigger moment is this huge backlash almost to the gains that transgender Americans have made over the past decade.

'A reckoning over a string of Trump-led policies affecting transgender people is about to arrive at the Supreme Court. Stick around.

I think after my sophomore year, like seeing like how good I was and how capable I was, I was like, okay, like I'm obviously getting a full ride to school.

I mean, I love the confidence. Mayumi Berry started running track in high school. She was especially good at hurdles. She loved it.

It just became such an escape for me, that I was able to grow and excel as much as I did because of how much of a meditative practice it was for me.

But when she arrived at Louisiana Tech in 2021 on a scholarship to run on the men's team there, competing became less of an escape and more of a problem. That's because Mayumi is transgender. She said she started presenting a more feminine appearance during high school and that continued into college.

I was still running on the men's team. I wasn't taking any hormones, but like I had like long hair and nails. So like a lot of times that meets like people would be very confused whenever they would call for like the men 400 or the men 100 hurdles. I was running under my dead name.

I mean, that must've been tough, right?

Um, yeah, it was. It was really hard, like warming up and them calling, like, everybody check in for men's 400 men's four by four men's whatever, like it was like, I was sort of like embarrassed every time before I even got on the line. And there was a lot of like strife with my coaches, like about, um, how I would wear my uniform. They obviously I had a men's uniform, but like the shorts are a lot longer than the girls uniform, but I would like just pull mine up higher.

Hmm

I think that the attention that I got made them feel a certain level of uncomfort. Uh, at one point I had a meeting with all of my coaches, like all three or four of my coach is just me and the head coach's office. And this was after I had received a death threat from two of my teammates, basically insinuating that if I were to be any sort of flirtatious with them, which like they weren't even in my event group and I didn't even see these guys every day. It was a lot to process, a lot to unpack and I felt like my coaches didn't have my back.

We reached out to Louisiana Tech's athletic department, which said it wasn't able to speak freely because of federal privacy laws, but it said the department, quote, followed procedures resulting in sound and responsible decisions involving Barry. But Mayumi said the blowback she received had nothing to do with what was happening on the track. She had multiple top five finishes in the 400 meter hurdles that season.

I think because they couldn't really say anything about my performance, like all they could do was attack my personality.

From now on, women's sports will be only for women.

Mayumi has watched over the past year as President Donald Trump and his administration have made sweeping moves against the transgender community, restricting health care and blocking their participation in wide swaths of American life, from the U.S. Military to sports teams.

With my action this afternoon, we're putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women's sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding. There will be no federal funding

'Since 2020, more than half of U.S. States have implemented bans on trans-athlete participation. Examples of trans athletes winning high-profile competitions are rare, but in 2021, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas became the first trans woman to win an NCAA Division one title.

Thomas won the 500 yard freestyle event in just over four and a half minutes. It was the fastest time of the NCAA season, but about nine seconds slower than the record previously set by Olympian Katie Ledecky.

'Components often point to Thomas' story as a cautionary tale, even though the NCAA's own president said in a congressional hearing last year that he was aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes in the whole organization. Well now, this week, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a case that could reshape the playing field for trans athletes, from elementary school to the university level. More on that in a bit. But one of the main arguments driving these bands comes down to fairness. That transgender women, even those who have undergone treatment to lower their testosterone levels, hold a physical advantage over the cisgender women they're competing against. Trans athletes and advocates, in turn, point to a lack of consistent, conclusive research to support that claim. There haven't been any large-scale studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies affect physical abilities. But Mayumi says no one was concerned about her having an advantage during her first year in college. She was running with the men's team, even though that wasn't where she really wanted to be. And even though she hadn't started treatment to lower her testosterone.

Whenever people outside would find out that I ran track, I think people would just assume that I run with women because of how I looked. And I would always have to explain to them like, no, like I'm not allowed, like there's not a universe that exists in which that would be okay in the NCAA division one level.

Oh, so you didn't even think it would have been a possibility.

No, it was not a possibility. Like the standards that were in place at the time where you had to be on hormones and obviously would be subjected to various testing. I ended up like saying like, no, actually I'm just gonna transition now. And if it affects my ability to perform then I'll just stop running.

So you were willing to give up your athletic career in order to feel, you know, more comfortable as a person.

Yeah, essentially. Because also being a division one athlete, like you put your all, like you have to put your into your sport. And I just felt like I was not getting anything back from it.

'Mayumi left Louisiana Tech after one season. She transferred to the University of North Texas but only competed there for half a season on their men's track team and just wasn't working out. Mayumi felt torn between her need to transition and her desire to run track. She's still at the school studying behavioral therapy but sports is no longer a part of her day-to-day life. So you don't run anymore at all?

I don't, I'm like traumatized.

Not even just recreationally or anything like that.

I do yoga now.

It sounds like you've been through an incredibly complicated and frustrating emotional situation over these past couple of years, but I do want to make space for the reality that there are parents or athletes out there who may never be convinced. People like Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who has been very outspoken after tying for fifth against Leah Thomas in the one race they swam together.

Let's say Leah Thomas didn't solely transition to win, to change in the locker room with women. This opens a door to people who would fully be willing to take advantage of that opportunity.

'They see the situation as purely unfair, and they just don't want trans women in their sports. And whether that is born out of a genuine safety or fairness concern or some deep-seated unease or even fear of trans people in general fueled by bad faith political rhetoric, I can't say, you know, everybody's different. But I guess how would you respond to the folks who will just never be receptive to your perspective?

To those people, I would say that, you know, they're not thinking about the whole picture because it's not actually about fairness, it's actually not about trans women, because the amount of trans women who are trying to compete in women's sports is such a small number. In my opinion, it is more so about not erasing trans people from public life.

So, like I said, we're gonna be hearing about this big Supreme Court case this week. Coming up next, we are gonna talk about the legal issues at play and the possible implications for athletes across the country. Stick around. Okay, John Fritzi is here. He covers the Supreme Court for CNN. So John, can you just tell me what this case is all about?

Hey David, so actually there's two cases that the Supreme Court will hear arguments in on Tuesday. Both involve laws enacted by states that ban transgender girls from playing on women's sports teams. The states are West Virginia and Idaho. The big picture though is that, you know, transgender rights has obviously become this huge political issue.

Kamala's for they/them....President Trump is for you....

Donald Trump talks about it a lot came up a lot in the 24 campaign

It's an extreme view that is not shared by most Kansans to say that young women and girls should be forced to compete with and share locker rooms with people who are biologically male.

'And it's also playing out in Republican-controlled legislatures, and roughly 27 states have enacted similar bans, banning transgender girls playing on sports teams. And so this Supreme Court decision, when we get it, is likely to have sweeping implications nationwide, not just in these two states, and potentially it could expand beyond sports as well.

So what are the plaintiffs actually arguing here in these specific cases?

'Well, they argue that these laws, specifically in Idaho and West Virginia, violate Title IX. Title IX, of course, is sort of a landmark anti-discrimination law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex. And they're also arguing that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The basic theory here is that by banning transgender girls, that is a discrimination on the basis of sex. Let me talk about Becky Pepper Jackson for a minute. Becky Pepper-Jackson is a high school sophomore in West Virginia.

Right, this is the athlete at the center of this case. If I recall correctly, she was assigned male at birth but began transitioning after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2019.

Right, so CNN sat down with her a few weeks ago. I can tell you that she is a bright, engaging, funny kid. She also is really engaged in sports, and specifically track, and specifically shot put and discus. Those are her events. And that's sort of where this controversy begins. In 2021, West Virginia passes this law. The text of the law bans girls teams, including, quote, students of the male sex, end quote. So Becky Pepper Jackson and her family sue over this policy. They win in lower courts. They actually have won at the Supreme Court at a preliminary stage. Two years ago, the court allowed Pepper Jackson to continue to compete on her team. But now it's back at the Supreme Court, sort of at the merit stage, and everything is sort of shifted. The national narrative has shifted and. It's a very conservative court, and I think this is a challenge. This is going to be a challenging case for them to win.

So they had already kind of won at lower stages and even at the Supreme Court on kind of like an administrative basis, but now they're really digging into the legal issues. So what about that might make it difficult for her to win?

'Well, I just think that this is, first of all, a 6-3 conservative court. And also, it's a court that has signaled in case after case that it is highly skeptical of some of these discrimination claims based on coming from transgender Americans. And so you see that on the emergency docket in cases like passports, where the Supreme Court's overturned a policy that allowed transgender Americans to identify based on their gender identity on their passports. And requiring them to use their sex at birth. You see this in upholding the Trump administration's policy of kicking transgender Americans out of the military.

'And we're also following breaking news from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.

Most importantly, I think you see it last term in this case called Scrimetti that dealt with Tennessee's ban on treatments, transgender care for minors.

'Here, the court, in a 6-3 opinion, has upheld a Tennessee state law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. This case specifically focuses on access to medication used to transition.

That's really the last big case that we've gotten on the transgender issues by the Supreme Court.

Yeah, right. That was a big one. But that one obviously was about access to health care. This one is about sports and being able to play on certain teams. So do we think they're going to be looking at that differently? Like, how are they going to be viewing this this specific issue?

Right, exactly. So the Tennessee scrimmated case sort of came up, and we all wrote a lot of stories about transgender. And that was all true. But the way the Supreme Court decided it was really more about age and medicine, it looked at the law and said, look, this is a law that deals with minors. And it deals with the state's ability to regulate medicine. And based on that, it said Tennessee could move forward with this law. And it sort of dodged all of the big discrimination transgender questions that were sort of sitting there in the case. They're not gonna be able to dodge it in the sports case, or at least it's gonna be a heck of a lot harder to dodge it because the transgender sports case these questions are more squarely presented this issue of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.

Yeah, so on the basis of sex, and we see this is a very complicated issue when it comes to transgender people and how that is viewed. Is that why this is going to be so closely?

'I think so. I mean, you know, we drew some clues on this from Skirmetti. So while Skirmetty didn't deal with these issues, you had a bunch of justices sort of writing separately, which was interesting, and some of them signaling their views on some of these questions on the basis of sex. You had, for instance, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who kind of went out of her way to say that she didn't believe that transgender Americans were title to the same level of anti-discrimination protections. That other groups, say based on sex specifically, are entitled to. You had Justice Kavanaugh talking not in writing, but in oral arguments about some of these questions and sort of raising this, I think, skeptical question about, well, how does this apply to sports? I think the most important justice to watch might be Justice Gorsuch. Justice Goresuch said nothing at oral argument in Scrimetti, which is super unusual. He also didn't write anything separately. And the reason why that was interesting and why we're paying attention is that he wrote this pretty landmark case five years ago, a case called Ballstock v. Clayton County. That was a case that dealt not with Title IX, but with Title VII, another anti-discrimination law, that law dealing with the workplace, with employment discrimination. And what the court found in this opinion written by Gorsuch was that when Title VII says you can't discriminate on the basis of sex, that that includes your gender identity or your sexual orientation, in other words, that those people are covered by those protections. And at the time, the court, Gorsuch, went out of its way to say, look, we're not talking about any other legal context, we are not talking about Title IX. But it's sort of hard, I think, for the ACLU and the groups representing transgender Americans in these cases, they would argue, well, look what's the difference, right? Sort of very similar language. And if it applies in Title VII, why not in Title IX? So Gorsuch is going to be. I think a super important justice to watch at argument. Again, the big picture here is that this case comes up during this moment of blowback, both politically and legally on transgender Americans. If the Supreme Court rules that transgender Americans don't have the same level of protection as other groups of people, that would have implications for all sorts of policy areas, potentially beyond sports.

Well, yeah, I mean, because like you were saying, we're seeing all these different cases of the American lives of transgender people come up for review at the Supreme Court, whether it's access to gender identity health care, transgender service members in the military, restrictions on what sex markers can appear on U.S. Passports, and time and time again, they're losing. So I mean does it seem like the overarching message is that transgender people cannot rely on the courts for protection going forward?

Yeah, I think the courts are wrestling with these issues. I certainly think that the transgender American community probably does have a great deal of concern about that. And we'll see what they say. But certainly, the bigger moment is this huge, I think, backlash almost to the gains that transgender Americans have made over the past decade.

Yeah, big moment. We'll see the justices talk about this at arguments coming up on Tuesday. John, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Hey, thank you.

You'll be able to follow these arguments over at cnn.com on Tuesday. And that is also the place for the latest updates on what's going on in Minneapolis and Portland and in Iran, just a lot going on in the world right now. CNN is doing our best to stay on top of everything. We'll be back right here on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.