Nancy Mace Slams Trans Athlete’s Lawyer for Refusing to Define Sex at SCOTUS Women’s Sports Hearing
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Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., criticized American Civil Liberties Union attorney Joshua Block for refusing to define sex after arguing against considering its definition during a Supreme Court hearing on trans athletes in women’s sports.
Block, who represents West Virginia transgender athlete Becky Pepper-Jackson, urged the nine justices not to consider the definition of sex when deciding Pepper-Jackson’s case, saying, “I don’t think the purpose of Title IX is to have a precise definition of sex.”
Block later admitted, “I think in this case it’s safe to say that we’re talking about what they’ve called biological sex.”
The lawyer then refused to give his definition of sex after the hearing when asked by News Digital and avoided further questions.
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Joshua Block, senior attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Projects and lead attorney representing Becky Pepper-Jackson, stands outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, January 13, 2026. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Mace shared footage of Block dodging the question about X, condemning the ACLU for refusing to define “sex.”
“If the ACLU can’t even define what sex is, it has no credibility lecturing anyone about sex discrimination, which is the entire basis of its argument,” Mace wrote.
John Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom, the law firm representing the athletes and the state of West Virginia, said Block’s insistence on not defining sex was “completely bizarre.”
“That’s completely bizarre. I don’t know how you can decide a case that interprets sex under Title IX and under the equal protection clause without defining sex,” Bursch told News Digital after the hearing.
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“Sex, when Title IX was passed, meant biological sex. The entire statute was written with biological distinctions. It even refers to each of the sexes. I don’t know how the court can do that, and it speaks volumes that he and the ACLU felt they had to tell the court not to define sex in order to survive this case.”
Early in the hearing, Block downplayed the impact Pepper-Jackson’s presence on a women’s cross-country team had on other girls, arguing that cross-country is a no-cut sport. Justice Neal Gorsuch responded by saying that many sports have cuts and that those sports are also affected by the ruling in this case.
Block responded by arguing that many female athletes don’t make the cut on their team because other athletes outclass them, and then admitted that if a female athlete is displaced by a trans athlete, it’s “unfortunate.”
“No one likes to lose. No one likes not being part of the team. People often don’t make the team. Cisgender girls don’t make the team when they compete against other cisgender girls all the time, and I think the question… is whether it’s an unfair advantage because a transgender girl participated,” Block said.
“And if there’s no biological distinction based on sex, then I think it’s an unfortunate situation. But I think it’s the unfortunate situation that arises from having a zero-sum game, not from inherent injustice.”
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At one point, Block, referring to trans athletes like Pepper-Jackson, argued: “There is a group of people who are assigned male at birth, for whom being placed on the boys’ team is detrimental.”
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Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for News Digital covering critical political and cultural issues in sports, with an investigative lens. Jackson’s reporting has been cited in federal government actions related to Title IX enforcement and in mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The News and ESPN.com.