Delivering another major blow to LGBTQ rights, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
The court, largely divided 6-3, ruled against two transgender students, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, who had challenged restrictive laws in West Virginia and Idaho, respectively. The ruling is the latest in a string of defeats for transgender people at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, concluded that the laws do not violate either the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the law apply evenly to everyone, or Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in education.
“The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” Kavanaugh wrote.
He expressed sympathy for transgender girls and women who desire to play sports, saying “their desire to compete warrants respect” and that they should not be “ostracized or vilified.”
The Plaintiffs
Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, has taken puberty-blocking medication and estrogen and competed in girls’ cross-country, shot put, and discus. Hecox, a 25-year-old college student, has received testosterone suppression and estrogen treatments. She tried out for the women’s track and cross-country teams in college without success and has since participated in running and club soccer.
A Series of Losses
The ruling is the latest in a string of defeats for transgender people at the Supreme Court. Last year, the court upheld state laws that ban gender transition treatments for transgender youth. Earlier this year, the court ruled in favor of parents who object to California policies aimed at protecting transgender students. The court also allowed Trump administration policies that bar transgender people from the military and prevent them from including their gender identity on passports.
In an earlier ruling in 2020 that now seems increasingly like an outlier, the court surprisingly ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment, applies to gender identity as well as sexual orientation.
The Broader Context
While transgender rights appeared to have some momentum a decade ago, the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction. President Donald Trump, a staunch opponent of transgender rights, issued an executive order soon after taking office last year called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and his administration sided with the states in the Supreme Court case.
The International Olympic Committee announced in March that transgender women could not compete in Olympic female sports categories going forward. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee had already imposed new restrictions on transgender athletes.
The State Laws
The West Virginia law, enacted in 2021, says gender is “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” As such, it says, a female is a person “whose biological sex was determined at birth as female.” The Idaho law, passed a year earlier, similarly says that sports “designated for females, women, or girls should not be open to students of the male sex.”
Although the ruling directly concerns only West Virginia and Idaho, it is likely to affect 25 other states with similar bans.
The Bottom Line
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, ruling 6-3 that the laws do not violate the Constitution or Title IX. The decision is the latest in a series of defeats for transgender rights at the high court. The ruling directly affects laws in West Virginia and Idaho and is likely to impact 25 other states with similar bans.
