US supreme court rules states can exclude trans athletes from female sports
Justices voted to overturn judgments issued by lower courts in favor of trans students who sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho
The US supreme court has upheld laws in two conservative states excluding transgender girls and women from competing in female sports in a far-reaching ruling likely to pave the way for similar bans throughout the US and handing Donald Trump a key “culture war” victory.
The court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favor of two trans students who had sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho respectively.
The ruling centered on the case of Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia.
The court – which is split 6-3 in a conservative-liberal majority – ruled that banning transgender women and girls from competing in sports does not violate Title IX, a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in education.
The three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts.
The impact is likely to have a wider resonance because Idaho and West Virginia’s prohibitions against transgender athletes are already replicated in at least 25 other states. It seems likely that Tuesday’s ruling will be interpreted as a green light by these states, although its impact on ongoing lawsuits challenging state laws in California, Connecticut and other states is unclear.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court that, “states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females”.
The outcome was prefigured by a session to hear oral arguments in January, when some conservative justices displayed sympathy for the view that transgender competitors were undermining fairness in women’s sports on the grounds that their birth sex gave them a competitive advantage.
It represents another ruling by the court favorable to Trump, who has consistently and vehemently railed against the phenomenon of what he has called “men in women’s sports”, support for which he has tried to pin on the Democrats.
The issue has been in the vanguard of Trump’s efforts to wage “culture wars” as a weapon in imposing his agenda and has assumed outsize importance in proportion to to the number of individuals involved.
Charlie Baker, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), told Congress in 2024 that he was aware of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than 500,000 students on campus teams.
Nevertheless, Trump used the Democrats’ perceived sympathies as a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election, airing a television and digital advert that proclaimed “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
The NCAA and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports in response to an executive order signed by Trump aimed at barring their participation.
Polls have shown a majority of US adults broadly in favor of rules restricting transgender children and teenagers to participating in sports competitions in the genders they were assigned at birth.
Trump’s administration has cracked down on the use of gender-neutral pronouns – refusing to answer correspondence that uses them, while also barring them from passports. It has also taking steps to limit access to gender transition surgery.
Hecox, a college student, had originally sued Idaho in an attempt to overturn its 2020 first-in-the-nation law banning trans woman and girls from female sports team. She later tried to have the case dismissed, saying she was no longer pursuing female sports and feared being harased, but the court insisted on hearing it.
Pepper-Jackson challenged West Virginia’s law on the grounds that she had undergone gender-affirming treatment at a young age, did not experience male puberty, and thus enjoyed no unfair advantage. She has identified as a girl since the age of eight and was issued with a West Virginia birth certificate identifying her as female, later becoming the statewide champion in the shot put.
She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in the entire state.
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The court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favor of two trans students who had sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho respectively. Meanwhile the ruling centered on the case of Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia.
Reading that the ruling centered on the case of Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia — hard to argue with the logic there.
Lindsay Hecox is in a tough spot here, curious how they navigate it.
The bigger issue here is the ruling centered on the case of Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia. That changes the calculation.
In other words the three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts. Curious to see how this develops.
In other words the court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favor of two trans students who had sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho respectively. Curious to see how this develops.
The fact that the court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favor of two trans students who had sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho respectively really puts things into perspective.
The ruling centered on the case of Lindsay Hecox, a college student in Idaho, and Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school student from West Virginia. Meanwhile the three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts.
Considering the three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts, it raises some real questions about what happens next.
Basically the three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts. What matters is whether anything changes because of it.
If the three liberal justices dissented from some parts of the judgement, but concurred with other parts, then the bigger picture starts to look very different.
On one hand justices voted to overturn judgments issued by lower courts in favor of trans students who sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia. But at the same time the court voted to overturn previous judgements issued by lower courts in favor of two trans students who had sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia and Idaho respectively.
What stands out is justices voted to overturn judgments issued by lower courts in favor of trans students who sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia. That is the part worth paying attention to.
The detail about justices voted to overturn judgments issued by lower courts in favor of trans students who sued after being barred from competing in West Virginia is something people should sit with.