Originally posted on IdahoEdNews.org on October 15, 2025
BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun)The five-year legal battle over Idaho’s transgender athletics ban will continue, in at least one federal court.
On Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Court Judge David Nye kept the case alive in Idaho federal court, while a U.S. Supreme Court appeal is in limbo.
Lindsay Hecox, a Boise State University transgender student, has fought Idaho’s transgender athletics law since its passage in 2020. But Hecox has asked the Idaho federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court to drop her case. Hecox says she is focusing on graduating from college and no longer plans to play in women’s sports at Boise State.
The Supreme Court has not acted on Hecox’s request.
And while Nye said he was conflicted on the matter — and reluctant to force Hecox to continue a case she no longer wants to pursue — he says the state and the public have a vested interest in seeing the case through to a ruling.
“The state of Idaho has defended this case vigorously for years,” Nye wrote. “It would be fundamentally unfair to abandon the issue now on the eve of a final resolution.”
Attorney General Raúl Labrador hailed the ruling.
“This decision keeps our lawsuit alive, and I won’t stop until women and girls are safe to compete, participate, and excel in competitive sports,” Labrador said in a Wednesday news release.
Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports. The law is on hold; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has blocked it from going into effect.
Idaho has appealed the Circuit Court ruling, and in July, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
If the Supreme Court indeed hears the case, rejecting Hecox’s motion to drop it, oral arguments are likely in January, Labrador’s office said Wednesday.
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