The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled in the barring of transgender female athletes’ participation from girls and women’s school sports teams.
(AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
lisa keen | Special contributor
Keen News Service
In a stunning smack down, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on June 30 that states may ban transgender females from participating in sports competitions for females at schools which receive federal funding.
While there were dissents from the court’s most liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — all nine agreed in the judgment that states may ban trans female athletes from female sports competitions.
The result was widely predicted following the oral arguments in January, but no one guessed it would be unanimous in the judgment.
The decision emerged out of appeals from two states — Idaho and West Virginia — but will clear the way for enforcement of existing bans in 25 other states with similar bans.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the decision consolidating two appeals, said one could not “plausibly” interpret Title IX, a federal law that bans discrimination based on sex in educational programs, to be anything other than “biological sex.”
“The ordinary meaning of the term ‘sex’ at the time of enactment in the early 1970s was biological sex and not gender identity, particularly in the sports context,” wrote Kavanaugh. Title IX does not say “schools must allow certain biological males to participate in women’s and girls’ sports. Nor do the statute or regulations say that schools must make an exception for those biological males who identify as female and have taken puberty blockers or hormones.”
Legal activists with the ACLU and Lambda Legal said they are very disappointed in the decision but believe it is a narrow one, leaving much to be decided when the questions are in contexts other than sports. The ACLU’s Joshua Block said the organizations would continue to “push back against attempts to erase trans people from public life.” Sasha Buchert of Lambda said she was “profoundly disappointed” that the court did not address the fact that the teenaged plaintiff in the West Virginia case had taken puberty blockers at a young age and did not pose a safety threat to other female players. They noted that, while the decision leaves state bans against trans female athletes in place, it does not require other states to adopt such bans.
Jennifer Levi of GLADLaw said “this ruling is not the end of the story.”
“Many states have developed thoughtful, evidence-based policies that treat students as individual athletes — and those remain in place,” Levi said in a press statement. “When a law bars every transgender girl regardless of age, hormones or physiology, it isn’t about competitive fairness. It’s about keeping transgender kids out. We can protect women’s sports without doing that. Most of the country already does.”
In reaching the opinion, the court had to deal with its 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch for a six to three majority, said a federal law (Title VII) barring discrimination on the basis of “sex” in employment also prohibits discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and “gender status.” Kavanaugh stated simply that employment and sports are “vastly different.”
The court ruled that the state bans on trans females in female sports do not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, because, Kavanaugh wrote, the government has an important interest in ensuring the “safety and competitive fairness” of women’s sports. The decision also said that it does not matter whether some trans females take puberty blockers early in life.
The Supreme Court consolidated two cases involving a transgender female athlete, even though one fact in their cases was starkly different. Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, who challenged the West Virginia law, started taking puberty blocking medications in the third grade and never went through the bodily changes that males go through during puberty.
Thus, her attorneys argued, she does not have any biological advantage over cisgender female athletes. Lindsay Hecox, 24, who challenged the law in Idaho, began experiencing gender dysphoria in elementary school but did not begin to take drugs to suppress testosterone until her first year in college. The state of Idaho passed a blanket ban against trans-female athletes in school just as Hecox was preparing to try out for her school’s soccer and track-and-field teams.
Both athletes argued that the bans violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and Title IX of the federal Education Amendments Act: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Nearly all secondary schools and about 90 percent of colleges and universities receive federal funding for various purposes.
The court ruled that the state bans on trans females in female sports do not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, because, Kavanaugh wrote, the government has an important interest in ensuring the “safety and competitive fairness” of women’s sports. The decision also said that it does not matter whether some trans females take puberty blockers early in life.
Both the Fourth and Ninth circuit U.S. Courts of Appeals ruled against the state bans, and both West Virginia (in West Virginia v. BPJ) and Idaho (in Little v. Hecox) appealed to the Supreme Court.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Bostock v. Clayton County, that “on the basis of sex” in Title VII (barring discrimination based on sex in the workplace), includes prohibition of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
In February 2025, President Trump signed an executive order saying federal funds would be rescinded from any federally funded educational program that “results in the endangerment, humiliation and silencing of women and girls” in sports “and deprives them of privacy.” And the Department of Justice under Trump argued in favor of the state bans on trans females playing in female sports.
The West Virginia and Idaho appeals (West Virginia v. BPJ and Little v. Hecox) were two of the last four decisions released in the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 session.
There were also two of three transgender related appeals this session –decisions considered as among 12 “major cases” by scotusblog.com. In Chiles v. Colorado, an 8 to 1 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado could not ban therapists from recommending their clients under 18 undergo “conversion therapy” to convert from LGBTQ+ to straight. The court said the Colorado law regulated speech based on viewpoint, violating the therapist’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
The good news of the session, from the LGBTQ+ perspective, included three appeals involving attempts by parents to insist schools report to parents any information they have about a student’s exploration of sexual orientation or gender identity. The court declined to take up those cases.
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