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transgender athletes
By Upholding State Bans on Transgender Athletes, the Supreme Court Bowed to Bigotry
The decision codifies transphobic language and opens the potential for the sex testing of youth athletes.
Jul 03, 2026
In one of its final decisions of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court of the United States solidified its place in the onslaught of eradicating trans rights, in a ruling that revolved largely around whether state bans of transgender athletes violated Title IX and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
In response to the question placed before the court of whether states could implement bans on transgender athlete participation in girls’ and women’s sports, 6 of the 9 justices said, “Yes.”
Outside of patchy citations and contradicting interpretations of legal precedents, the rationale behind the majority opinion of the court, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, echoed three key premises in the “sports context.” First, female bodies are inherently physiologically different from male bodies, which map onto sex-based athletic advantages for males. Second, regardless of these differences, girls and women should have equal opportunities to boys and men. And third, because of these differences and because of equal guarantees between the sexes, “competitive fairness” and “safety” look different for the female category as compared with the male category. Consequently, the only way to ensure equal sporting opportunities for girls and women is to keep transgender girls and women, or “biological males,” out of the female category.
Anti-transgender advocates in the broader “save women’s sports” movement frequently draw from these rationales, but also ignore the underlying deeply problematic and troubling considerations. On an ethical level, this approach undermines inclusive efforts and further stigmatizes transgender individuals. On a public health level, this reasoning deprives an exceptionally vulnerable population from enjoying the social, mental, and physical benefits from physical activity that should be enjoyed by all. And on a pragmatic level, these declarations overlook the minimal number of out transgender youth, of which even fewer participate in high school level sports.
Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Beyond parroting this tired transphobic logic, the majority opinion also points to other sports governing bodies, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, who have “drawn a biological line” to ensure safe and fair competition by banning transgender athletes. What Justice Kavanaugh omits, however, is that both organizations abruptly changed their policies following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order No. 14201, rather than in response to any scientific evidence or domination of transgender athletes (in response to a Senate hearing question about how many transgender athletes compete in the NCAA, NCAA President Charlie Baker infamously responded that of the more than 500,000 athletes competing, he knew of “only 10”).
While this ruling itself does not necessarily come as a surprise to those who have followed along with the US’ steady rollback of transgender rights, perhaps the most shocking element of the SCOTUS’ majority opinion is the brazen use of transphobic and misogynistic language in their ruling. “Biological males” and “biological females,” which are used 64 and 31 times respectively in Justice Kavanaugh’s 29-page majority opinion, are not rooted in medical terminology. Instead, these are terms that have become popularized and mobilized by anti-transgender advocates to reinforce a binary model of sex difference. This type of sex segregation is premised on patriarchal beliefs of male athletic superiority and female athletic inferiority, and has historically led to harmful body policing, racial discrimination, and erasure of intersex persons.
There is also reference to an “ongoing medical and scientific debate” surrounding whether transgender athletes maintain athletic and performative advantages after transitioning. What is absent from this brief discussion of science, however, is the concrete evidence that has shown the abundant health disparities experienced by the transgender community, particularly transgender youth. In 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, compared with their cisgender counterparts, transgender youth are more likely to report violence, victimization, unstable housing, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Similarly, a 2024 study in Nature Human Behavior found that anti-transgender state laws, including transgender sport participation bans, directly increased incidents of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%.
The (mis)direction of attention to abstract ideas of “competitive fairness” and unsettled science also disregards the rampant incompliance of institutions with Title IX. In 2023, Florida State University (FSU) agreed to add women’s lacrosse as a varsity sport after threats of a sexual discrimination lawsuit from its women’s club lacrosse team. The threat came on the heels of an 18-month USA TODAY investigation, which revealed that the university was egregiously out of Title IX compliance. FSU was far from the exception, however, as the investigation exposed how hundreds of colleges and universities manipulated their roster numbers for women’s sports to create a mirage of compliance. These Title IX transgressions emerged under the backdrop of several systemic issues in women’s sports, such as the decline in the number of women coaches for women’s sports, consistent underfunding, disproportionate rates of harassment and abuse experienced by girls and women, and media underrepresentation. Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Despite these relevant considerations, and as Justice Sonia Sotomayer wrote in her dissent, “to the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”
In addition to the immediate impact on transgender athletes, this decision prompts questions around how girls’ and women’s sports will now be policed to “catch” athletes who do not fit within normative assumptions or understandings of female bodies. International sports governing organizations, such as World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee, have recently paired bans on transgender athlete participation with implementations of sex testing via chromosome tests, which has long been established as a fraught, unethical, and discriminatory practice.
The impacts on youth and high school sports are, and will be, more pronounced. Organizations at these levels lack the same resources and financial capacities, meaning that, for high school athletic associations, sex testing would most likely involve some type of genital or physical examination. While these might be conducted by medical personnel (though the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal is evidence that this does not guarantee safeguarding minors), depending on access or finances, these could also be conducted by coaches, other parents, or officials, which prompts further questions and justified concerns surrounding training, confidentiality, consent, and protections of minors. These practices not only impact transgender athletes, but all athletes, regardless of gender identity or, to borrow from Justice Kavanaugh, “biological sex.”
The ruling closes with a half-hearted remark that “no student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.” What the SCOTUS fails to recognize, however, is that their ruling is predicated on the misguided vilification of transgender athletes, with impacts that will continue to ostracize transgender people in sports and broader society.
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Supreme Court Upholds Transgender Athlete Bans, Giving States Green Light For Discrimination
"We have entered a period when the legal recognition and legal protections for trans and intersex people are at an all-time low," said the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Jun 30, 2026
In a ruling that defenders of LGBTQ+ rights say clears the way for discrimination, the US Supreme Court upheld state laws banning transgender girls and women from participating on school and college athletic teams.
In a decision that will likely supercharge attacks on transgender people by red states and the Trump administration, the court said that state-level bans on transgender athletes did not violate either the 14th Amendment of the Constitution or Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education.
The court's six conservatives ruled that Idaho and West Virginia did not violate the equal protection clause because the laws were made in the interest of athletic fairness.
"Biological males generally possess inherent physical advantages in sports," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the majority, describing it as a topic where there is still "medical and scientific uncertainty."
He dismissed equal protection claims from two athletes: 16-year-old shot put champion Becky Pepper-Jackson of West Virginia and 25-year-old Boise State student Lindsey Hecox, who failed to make her school's cross-country team because she was "too slow" but played in club-level sports.
The athletes argued that they took puberty-blocking medication that would have blunted their advantages, but Kavanaugh wrote that states were under no obligation to "grant individualized exemptions to specific athletes or subclasses."
The court ruled unanimously that West Virginia's state ban did not violate Title IX. But the court's three liberals disagreed on the question of equal protection.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the scientific uncertainty surrounding the question was precisely why states should proceed with caution rather than enact categorical bans.
“In the end, to the court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious,” she wrote in her dissent.
She added that state bans will be harmful to trans people seeking friendship and community through sports. She said because of the court's decision, a state can deny young people "these experiences simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not."
Sasha Buchert, senior attorney and director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project at Lambda Legal—which represented Pepper-Jackson—said the ruling was "deeply harmful for transgender women and girls who only asked for the ability to participate in sports with their peers."
"Countless studies have demonstrated the myriad benefits that come with participation in team sports," she added. "Now, one population, transgender youth and collegians, are targeted for specific and baseless discrimination."
The decision effectively legitimizes efforts in more than two dozen Republican-led states that have adopted bans on transgender athletes. However, Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), noted that the decision did not go as far as it could have, allowing other states to leave intact policies that let trans students participate.
"This is a disappointing decision, but also a narrow one that leaves the door open for the many states and schools that have adopted reasonable policies that protect both fairness and inclusion with respect to transgender students," Minter said. "Today’s limited decision means that states and schools across the country still have the power to make reasonable rules to ensure fairness without banning all transgender girls."
NCLR staff attorney Rachel Berg said that the ruling still "ignores clear discrimination and political attacks against transgender girls" and invites "invasive policing of young people's bodies."
"Blanket bans on transgender girls playing school sports invite anyone to call for a ‘gender check’ on any girl who wants to play sports if they think she is ‘too tall’ or ‘too strong,’” she warned.
Lambda Legal listed several cases in which young people in states with bans have been singled out and targeted with aggressive physical scrutiny by state officials:
In Florida, a 15-year-old junior varsity volleyball player was the subject of a police investigation after an anonymous accusation, prompting local officials to draft a 500-page report investigating her medical history, body weight, and anatomy. In Utah, a teenage basketball player was accused of being transgender by a member of the state board of education, leading to threats of violence against her and her family, and a teenager in Maine faced a similar attack from a state senator. In May, President Donald Trump similarly targeted a 16-year-old transgender girl for participating in a high school track meet. Under an Arizona ban, a cisgender male student was prohibited from participating on the boys’ team at his high school because of a clerical error that listed him as female on his original birth certificate.
Tuesday's decision comes amid an onslaught of other state-level legislation attacking transgender people, including bans on gender-affirming care for youth, bathroom bans, restrictions and invalidations of legal documents, and laws prohibiting schools from respecting students' preferred gender identities.
Karla Gonzales Garcia, the gender, sexuality, and identity director at Amnesty International USA, said the decision also "comes at a time of rising authoritarian practices under the Trump administration, which use gender and sexuality as a cultural battle for political gain."
The administration has threatened to investigate, sue, and strip funding from schools that accept trans athletes; attempted to throttle medical funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care; banned transgender people from the military; and pushed to force transgender women into men's prisons where they are at severe risk of sexual assault.
The Center for Constitutional Rights said that Tuesday's ruling "confirms what trans and intersex advocates have known for some time: we are in the Plessy v. Ferguson/Bowers v. Hardwick era of trans rights," referring to Supreme Court cases that upheld Jim Crow segregation and state bans on homosexuality.
"We have entered a period when the legal recognition and legal protections for trans and intersex people are at an all-time low," the group continued. "Anti-trans policymakers and activists have, through their actions and rhetoric, made their goal clear: to terrorize trans people and remove them from public life."
Several Democratic members of Congress expressed solidarity with the transgender community following the ruling.
"The Supreme Court’s ruling to allow states to ban trans kids from playing in sports is discriminatory and opens the door to incredibly invasive examinations of children to determine who can play on what team," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose adult daughter is trans. "This decision targets a tiny population of athletes and further emboldens Republicans’ anti-trans crusade."
Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) warned that the decision "hands Trump yet another weapon to strip protections and funding from schools across our nation," and said Republicans were "weaponizing our most vulnerable kids as pawns in a fight they did not choose."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said: "We will keep fighting. Discrimination and hate will not win."
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Trans Athletes Don't Threaten Women—Patriarchal Politicians Do
As the defense teams in Hecox and BPJ seek to police the bodies of transgender women and girls, all women and girls who don’t adhere to society’s rigid standard of femininity will feel the impact.
Jun 07, 2026
The power politicians have over women’s bodies is one of the oldest tools of control in American history. Throughout that history, the promise of protecting women has been the longtime excuse for excluding women from civic life and limiting our freedom. That history isn’t over.
The Supreme Court will soon decide Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ—legal cases out of Idaho and West Virginia that will determine whether transgender athletes will be allowed to compete on women’s and girls’ school sports teams.
Idaho’s attorney general has argued that the bans ensure “women’s spaces and sports remain fair, safe, and dedicated to empowering female athletes.” Or, in other words, that we must allow politicians to pass these bans to “protect” women. Although the court’s decision is expected any day now, I have already made mine. Transgender sports bans are not and never have been about protecting women.
I have spent my career fighting to protect the bodily autonomy and legal protections of all women and girls. When people ask me, whether genuinely or in bad faith, why transgender women are unequivocally included in my organization’s work, I tell them the truth: Our fight is the same.
If you have been in the business of fighting for women’s rights and protections as long as I have, you know that women face many threats to their safety and autonomy, but not one of those threats includes transgender people.
The tactics being used to exclude transgender athletes are similar to those once used to keep women from casting a ballot, having a credit card, or getting the healthcare they need.
In 1776, a woman couldn’t own the clothes on her back, much less the home she built. Proponents of the practice said it was “intended for her protection.” One 100 years later, when women were shut out of the legal profession, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of such paternalism, even stating that “man is, or should be, woman’s protector.” And when women were later fighting for the right to abortion, we were told that our bodies are not our own.
It is no wonder, then, that the red herring of protecting women is being deployed in the Trump administration’s executive orders and in the Hecox and BPJ cases. It is the same excuse being used in a flurry of sports bans and anti-transgender bills that have been introduced and implemented around the country over the past six years. Ultimately, transgender sports bans fail to address the real threats women face in sports, like unfair pay and unequal access to training and facilities.
The great irony is that bans against transgender women in women’s sports, women’s bathrooms, and other areas of public life actually endanger all women. The Idaho law that the Hecox case is challenging, for example, requires women and girl student-athletes whose sex is disputed to undergo invasive sex testing, including physical examinations. Athletes in men’s sports are not subject to the same degradation.
For as long as women and girls have been allowed to participate in sports, their bodies have been scrutinized. From non-white women who do not conform to white beauty standards, to girls with short hair or baggy clothes, to those who are deemed too strong, women athletes who do not perform femininity as some deem correctly have been harassed, punished, and forced to face humiliating tests to prove their gender.
It is no accident that Project 2025 and its supporters are pushing both anti-transgender legislation and a rollback of women’s protections against sexual harassment and assault, their right to reproductive healthcare, and even their ability to vote. Today, as the defense teams in Hecox and BPJ seek to police the bodies of transgender women and girls, all women and girls who don’t adhere to society’s rigid standard of femininity will feel the impact.
If you have been in the business of fighting for women’s rights and protections as long as I have, you know that women face many threats to their safety and autonomy, but not one of those threats includes transgender people.
It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court’s decision in Hecox and BPJ will reaffirm what I already know to be true: We women, including transgender women, must be in the fight for liberation together.
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