Supreme Court allows states to bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports
WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld two state laws barring the participation of transgender female athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams.
The court’s 6-3 ruling deals with laws from West Virginia and Idaho but has implications for the 25 other states with similar restrictions, and for athletes who compete in school and collegiate sports nationwide.
The Trump administration, which backed the state bans, has targeted the participation of transgender athletes in sports amid a national rollback of rights for transgender people. President Trump directed federal agencies last year to withdraw funding from schools that allow transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
The cases attracted intense public interest, with Olympians and other elite athletes watching closely and submitting legal briefs in support of each side. In March, the International Olympic Committee barred transgender athletes from competing in the women’s category of the Olympics and said that all participants in those events must undergo genetic testing. The NCAA announced last year that it would bar trans women from competing in women’s sports.
At the Supreme Court, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a high school student from West Virginia, and Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, challenged their respective state’s laws, which both required that participation on sports teams for girls be based on “biological sex,” defined as a person’s birth sex.
Tuesday’s ruling divided the court along ideological lines, with the conservative majority allowing states to determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex.
The Constitution and Title IX “do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“Allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete — replacing her on the roster, knocking her out of the starting lineup, reducing her playing time, depriving her of a medal and the like,” he wrote. “That hard reality of sports cannot be ignored or swept under the rug.”
Kavanaugh, an avid sports fan and longtime girls’ basketball coach, concluded the majority opinion by emphasizing that the desire of transgender female athletes to compete “warrants respect.”
“No student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified,” he wrote.
The court’s three liberal justices agreed with the majority’s decision to reject the claims under Title IX, the federal law which has led to major increases in opportunities and participation for women in sports. But they said their colleagues had prematurely ended the constitutional challenge and should have allowed lower courts to determine whether Pepper-Jackson, a transgender girl who has not gone through male puberty because of medication, has an athletic advantage over other girls.
“These circumstances demand exercising judicial restraint, not rushing to answer conclusively difficult questions without sufficient evidentiary development,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read a summary of her dissent from the bench in a sign of her deep disagreement with the majority.
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The court, she added, denies transgender athletes the benefits of participating in school sports “simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not,” she wrote. “Sports, of course, are often zero sum, but the law need not and should not be.”
Lower courts had blocked enforcement of the laws, allowing Pepper-Jackson, 16, to compete on her high school track team while the litigation was underway. She is the only known athlete in West Virginia who would be subject to the law, and the court’s decision means she will no longer be allowed to participate on the girls’ team.
In both cases, the athletes asserted that the state laws violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, which requires the government to have valid reasons for treating people differently. Pepper-Jackson, who initially sued to join her middle school’s girls’ cross-country team when she was 11, also claimed that West Virginia’s statute violates the federal Title IX statute by denying her access to the school’s athletic program and treating her worse than her peers.
In a statement, one of the lawyers for the athletes called the court’s decision a “heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them.” Joshua Block, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBTQ and HIV Project, said the clients and others affected had “asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers.”
Lawyers for the states and the Trump administration had countered that the participation of transgender female athletes threatens to undermine five decades of progress since the passage of Title IX. A small percentage of Americans, about 1.3 percent, identify as trans and an even smaller number participate in competitive sports.
Governor Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia called the decision “one of the most important victories for women’s athletics since the enactment of Title IX itself.”
Trump also cheered the Supreme Court’s ruling on social media, writing, “Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!”
In New Hampshire, Governor Kelly Ayotte said the decision “paves the way” for New Hampshire to enforce its 2024 state law that bans transgender girls from girls’ school sports.
Tuesday’s decision does not address the legality of rules in other states such as California, where transgender girls have had the right to compete in girls’ events since 2013. The court called that a “debated policy question.”
The 27 states that have enacted bans on trans athletes over the past several years all had Republican-led legislatures. But ballot questions addressing transgender athlete participation are moving forward in Colorado and Washington, both Democrat-led states.
Kristen Waggoner, the president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which defended the bans in Idaho and West Virginia, said states that do not currently prohibit transgender athletes from playing girls’ sports should expect to be targeted by conservative advocates seeking the passage of such laws.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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