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The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld bans in Idaho and West Virginia on transgender athletes playing on girls' and women's sports teams, the latest in a string of legal setbacks for the LGBTQ+ community before the high court.
In a decision led by the court's six conservatives - but joined in parts by its three liberals - the justices found that states can separate teams based on "biological sex" without offending the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and Title IX, a landmark 1972 antidiscrimination law involving education.
"Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable: Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women's and girls' teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition," Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who coached his daughter's youth basketball team, wrote for the majority.
The court's three liberals, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, agreed that West Virginia's ban did not violate Title IX. But they disagreed with the majority on several fronts, especially the conclusion that the West Virginia law withstands scrutiny under the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection for all.
Sotomayor wrote that a lower court should have the chance to sort out a question central to the case of the teenage plaintiff from West Virginia, Becky Pepper-Jackson: whether trans girls who have not undergone male puberty have physical advantages in sports.
"Because of the Court's decision today, West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B.P.J. and others like her these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not," Sotomayor wrote.
The court did not address what is arguably the flip side of its ruling - whether schools and states can adopt policies allowing transgender athletes to compete on girls' and women's teams, as some liberal states and communities do.
"That question is currently the subject of litigation in some lower courts," Kavanaugh wrote in a footnote. "Nothing in this opinion is intended to decide that question."
The ruling is among several in recent terms that are consequential for the LGBTQ+ movement. The Supreme Court in March ruled a Colorado law banning "conversion therapy" for gay and transgender youths probably violated the free-speech rights of a religious counselor who wants to counsel such young people according to biblical teachings.
Earlier that month, the court sided with Christian parents in blocking, for now, California policies that discourage schools from informing parents of a student's sexual orientation or gender identity without the student's consent. Last year, the court upheld bans on gender transition treatment for minors.
Questions over whether transgender girls and women should play on girls' and women's sports teams has been a particular flash point in a broader conversation about transgender rights. Dozens of states have bans amid intense public debate about fairness at all levels of competition.
The issue came to the high court in a pair of cases, brought separately by Pepper-Jackson, a teen from West Virginia, and Lindsay Hecox, a Boise State University student in Idaho. Both argued that the bans in their states discriminated on basis of sex and violated the Constitution's equal protection clause. In January, the justices appeared sympathetic to arguments for keeping the bans in place as the cases were argued back-to-back.
LGBTQ+ activists said the decision would be devastating for some young people.
"This is a heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them who've asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers," said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, who argued the case for Pepper-Jackson.
Sasha Buchert, director of nonbinary and transgender rights at Lambda Legal, said the decision was upsetting but also narrow.
The ruling is "a serious loss - we're not minimizing that," she said. But noting that the court did not impose a national ban on transgender athletes in female sports, Buchert added, "This ruling says, sure, a state may discriminate, not that they must discriminate."
Twenty-seven states have passed laws banning transgender student-athletes from competing on women's or girls' sports teams. Supporters of the bans say they are necessary to ensure fairness and safety because of inherent physical differences between males and females. Opponents say the laws discriminate against trans people and should be struck down.
President Donald Trump early last year signed an executive order aimed at keeping transgender women out of women's sports. The administration has argued that there are only two sexes - male and female - and that they "are not changeable." Soon after the executive order on sports, the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee updated their policies to bar trans women from playing on women's sports teams. Since then, the administration has aggressively investigated schools that allow trans girls to participate in girls' and women's sports.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon welcomed the court's decision Tuesday.
"For years, ideologues distorted Title IX to advance a radical transgender agenda, subjecting women to immeasurable harm," she said in a statement.
Nicole Neily, founder and president of Defending Education, a conservative advocacy group, called the decision an "exercise in judicial humility" and noted that it may be disappointing to conservatives in liberal states that allow transgender athletes to participate.
"Although it's certainly not as sweeping as parent activists would have liked, it means that the action shifts to the states and is now a persuasion game," she said in a statement.
Views among Americans on transgender issues are nuanced. A Pew Research Center survey published in February 2025 showed 56 percent of adults support policies aimed at protecting transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.
But over the past few years, Americans also have become more supportive of restrictions for transgender people, according to the Pew survey. Fifty-six percent of Americans supported bans on providing gender transition care for minors, up 10 percentage points from 2022, the study found.
But athletics have always stood out.
The Pew survey found that 66 percent favored laws that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth, up eight points from 2022. Even before the general shift in public opinion, a majority of Americans opposed allowing trans women to compete against other women at all levels of sports, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
The science concerning biological advantages of transgender girls and women in sports is evolving and remains hotly debated. The case featured competing evidence about whether transgender girls are inherently better at sports. The transgender plaintiffs presented evidence that transitioning before puberty prevents them from building enough body mass to have an advantage in high school and college sports.
Lawyers for the states countered with studies that showed that non-transgender boys and men perform better at all ages. The study found that boys between the ages of 7 and 12 ran about 4 percent faster and jumped about 7 percent farther than girls in the same age group.
"The legislatures and the schools are better equipped - and under the Constitution, are the more appropriate entities - to assess the competing medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines," Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. "Of course, no line that the States draw will satisfy everyone."
While there's no comprehensive tally of trans athletes nationally, an estimated 300,100 transgender youths between the ages of 13 and 17 live in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, has estimated that 14 percent of trans boys and 12 percent of trans girls play on a sports team.
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