Here’s the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition, Ep 2: Who gets to play school sports?

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3.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re back with another episode of “Here’s the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition.” This month, NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett is speaking with legal experts and lawyers to discuss the cases being argued this term — and the legal precedents that underpin them. Our second episode is about the transgender student athletes who are challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevent them from competing on girls’ teams in school sports. The courts of appeals in each district have sided with the student athletes, but Supreme Court watchers agree that the justices are likely to uphold the bans. Former ACLU national legal director David Cole argued Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020), in which a 6-3 majority of justices established transgender people as a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination. Host Laura Jarrett talks to Cole about his client Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job after she came out as transgender. He explains how he won over conservative justices on the high court, and why the stakes are different for the transgender athletes in these cases.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, meet the press listeners. It's Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent for NBC News. I'm dropping in your feed here to share a special new episode from the NBC News podcast. Here's the scoop. This month on the show, we're doing something a little different. It's exciting. It's a four-part Supreme Court edition with new episodes on Saturdays in May. I'm talking to legal experts
0:22.9	and the lawyers behind some of the biggest precedent-setting cases of the past that shaping the
0:29.5	major decisions still left to come before the high court. So if you like what you hear,
0:34.2	subscribe to Here's the Scoop wherever you get your podcast.
0:45.3	Dear friends and coworkers, what I must tell you is very difficult for me and is taking all the courage I can muster. I have a gender identity disorder.
0:53.9	When Amy Stevens wrote that letter to her colleagues at Harris funeral homes in Detroit,
0:59.3	back in 2013, she knew her life was going to change forever.
1:04.2	After grappling with her gender identity for years, Amy was announcing that she decided to
1:09.7	transition from male to female.
1:12.4	Her inner battle over how she'd show herself to the world weighed on her heavily.
1:18.3	Here's what she told NBC News in 2020.
1:21.6	I stood in the backyard with a gun to my chest.
1:25.2	But in the hour, I realized I couldn't go through with it.
1:28.8	I was important enough to keep going.
1:35.2	What Amy didn't know was that the ripple effect from that letter
1:39.1	would eventually lead her all the way to the Supreme Court,
1:42.9	serving as a plaintiff in the first
1:44.7	transgender rights case ever heard by the High Court.
1:48.3	Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, Amy Stevens is a transgender woman.
1:54.7	She was a valued employee of Harris' funeral homes for six years until she told her boss
2:00.2	that she was going to live and identify
2:02.4	as a woman. Amy's case combined with those of two gay men, Gerald Bostock, and Don Zarda,
	...

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