Supreme Court says states can bar transgender athletes from girls' and women's sports

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. (Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, public domain)

The Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that states can bar transgender athletes from girls' and women's sports teams, upholding laws in Idaho and West Virginia and leaving similar bans in more than two dozen states in force.

The decision, in the consolidated cases West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, resolved two appeals the justices heard in January. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.

What the court decided

The justices agreed unanimously that the two laws do not violate Title IX, the federal law that bars sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money. They split 6-3 on the constitutional question, with the majority holding that the laws also do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

"Consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the States may maintain women's and girls' sports for biological females," Kavanaugh wrote. "They may 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."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She wrote that the majority "inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions." She added that she shared the majority's concern for "the young cisgender girls and women who play sports" and the interest in keeping competition "fair and safe."

The two cases

The ruling combined challenges to laws in two states.

Idaho passed the Fairness in Women's Sports Act in 2020, the first state law of its kind. It bars transgender women and girls from women's and girls' teams in public schools from elementary school through college. West Virginia passed its Save Women's Sports Act in 2021, which restricts participation in girls' and women's teams in public secondary schools and colleges.

The challengers were two transgender athletes. Lindsay Hecox sued after seeking to try out for the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. Becky Pepper-Jackson, identified in filings as B.P.J., is a West Virginia high school student who sued through her mother after learning the state law would keep her off her school's girls' teams. Pepper-Jackson's lawyers told the court she takes puberty-delaying medication and estrogen and argued that she has no biological athletic advantage over other girls.

State officials argued that the laws draw permissible distinctions between the sexes that are substantially related to protecting opportunities in girls' and women's sports.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled Idaho's ban likely unconstitutional, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had found West Virginia's law violated Title IX. The decision reversed both.

Context

The ruling follows the court's decision last term, also 6-3, in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld a Tennessee law restricting puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. President Trump signed an executive order in 2025 directing that schools receiving federal funds bar transgender girls and women from teams matching their gender identity. The NCAA and the International Olympic Committee have also revised their eligibility rules to limit women's competition to athletes assigned female at birth.

The decision settles the Title IX and equal-protection questions for the Idaho and West Virginia laws. The dissent argued the court did so without giving Pepper-Jackson a full chance to develop her case, an objection that leaves room for future litigation over how the bans apply to individual athletes.