Supreme Court Upholds State Laws Banning Trans Athletes

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws banning transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams matching their gender identity, endorsing prohibitions in more than half the states against transgender inclusion.

“Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex,” Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion from the six Republican-appointed justices. The three liberals filed opinions concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Kavanaugh wrote that the “term ‘sex’ in Title IX” and in regulations surrounding it “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to 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,” Kavanaugh said. “In addition, the Title IX regulations allowed separate sports teams precisely because of the inherent physical differences between biological men and biological women.”

Kavanaugh noted that the ruling doesn’t affect state or institutional policies that currently allow trans women to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams, which is the subject of other litigation. “In addition, nothing in this opinion should be interpreted to address or limit participation by biological females on male or co-ed sports teams,” he added.

The court’s ruling likely won’t have an immediate impact on most college trans athletes and institutions, as the NCAA has barred trans women students from competing in the sport in alignment with their gender identity. Still, it’s a blow for trans students and their advocates, and the decision supports the Trump administration, which has worked to roll back trans students’ rights.

Twenty-seven states ban trans women from participating at some level of athletics, according to lawyers both defending and arguing against such laws. During President Trump’s first term in office, Idaho became the first state to pass a law outright banning trans girls and women from participating on women’s teams.

In February 2025, shortly after he returned to the White House, Trump signed an executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports and threatening to cut off universities’ federal funding if they allowed them to. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy restricting competition “to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”

In April 2025, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a trans woman to compete on a women’s sports team—presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, in accord with NCAA policies at that time.

Although the court’s opinion focuses on athletics, the Trump administration has opened a number of investigations into whether policies that support trans students, such as allowing them to access the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, violate Title IX.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the ruling “cements” the administration’s Title IX reforms.

“This is a tremendous victory, and we look forward to ensuring that every educational institution in America abides by the law of the land,” McMahon said. 

The court ruled in two long-running cases: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. Both center on whether anti–trans participation laws violate Title IX and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The federal government joined these red states’ attorneys and solicitors general in defending the laws.

Idaho passed its law in 2020. Lindsay Hecox is a trans woman who was nevertheless able to participate in women’s club running and club soccer at Boise State University because she sued that same year and a district court blocked enforcement of the law against her.

In 2024, her lawyers wrote that she tried out for the university women’s cross-country and track teams but didn’t make it, “consistently running slower than her cisgender women competitors.” Her attorneys stressed that her “circulating testosterone levels are typical of cisgender women.”

Hecox’s attorneys opposed the Supreme Court taking up the case, previously writing that it’s “about a four-year-old injunction against the application of [the Idaho law] with respect to one woman, which is allowing her to participate in club running and club soccer.” This past September, her lawyers argued the case had become moot, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and “committed not to try out for or participate in any school-sponsored women’s sports covered by” the state law.

But Idaho’s attorney general argued the case should continue—despite Hecox being the person who filed the case in the first place, against the state.

In West Virginia, Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a sixth grader, intended to compete in cross-country and track and field, but she wouldn’t have been able to do so because of a state ban passed in 2021. Her mother sued, and judges blocked enforcement of the Mountain State’s law against the student.

Pepper-Jackson’s attorneys wrote that the sports she’s participated in are noncontact, and that she “has received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of girls, with all the physiological musculoskeletal characteristics of cisgender girls and none of the testosterone-induced characteristics of cisgender boys.” They also previously wrote that she participated in postseason shot put and discus, “where her performance is well within the range of cisgender girls.”

Last month, Pepper-Jackson won the Class AAA girls’ state championship in shot put.