{"id":282744,"date":"2026-06-30T20:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/282744\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T20:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:22:16","slug":"supreme-court-upholds-state-bans-on-trans-athletes-in-girls-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/282744\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court upholds state bans on trans athletes in girls’ sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The\u00a0Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0ruled Tuesday that states can bar\u00a0transgender female competitors from\u00a0playing girls\u2019 sports\u00a0in a landmark decision with major implications for more than half the\u00a0country, where\u00a0such policies are in place.<\/p>\n

In a 6-3 opinion,\u00a0the high court determined that neither\u00a0Idaho nor West Virginia<\/a>\u00a0had\u00a0violated\u00a0the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with their bans,\u00a0as well as that Title IX allowed states to separate sports teams on the basis of biological sex.<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0majority opinion<\/a>\u00a0by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u00a0also underscored the importance of treating transgender athletes with respect.<\/p>\n

Becky Pepper-Jackson was a top competitor in girls\u2019 discus and shot put. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the biological female and transgender student-athletes\u00a0who are\u00a0involved in transgender sports disputes around\u00a0the country are teenagers or in their early twenties,\u201d\u00a0Kavanaugh wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose\u00a0student\u00a0athletes want to play sports. Their desire to compete warrants respect. No student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether\u00a0a\u00a0biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some\u00a027 states have implemented<\/a>\u00a0laws similar to those in Idaho and West Virginia barring biological males from competing in women\u2019s sports for public schools and colleges. The Supreme Court opinion does not automatically reverse policies in states such as California and Connecticut which permit transgender athletes to compete in sports. Rather, the court\u2019s decision allows individual states to make decisions on their athletes, setting up a patchwork system of rules much like access to abortion.<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh, who spent years coaching his daughters\u2019 basketball teams in suburban Maryland,\u00a0stressed that the court\u00a0is deferring policy questions to the states and the democratic process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Follow The Post\u2019s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysis<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSports are highly competitive and generally zero sum,\u201d he wrote for the majority. \u201cWomen and girls who play sports care deeply about all of\u00a0those things. They obsess about them. They spend\u00a0extraordinary time and effort to train in the heat and in the cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two transgender athletes waged similar challenges to the state\u00a0bans, arguing that the statutes\u00a0flouted\u00a0their rights and the law barring\u00a0programs that engage in sex-based\u00a0discrimination\u00a0from receiving federal funds.<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n

The three liberal justices would have\u00a0allowed the states to proceed with their bans under a much narrower legal rationale that would have left the laws more susceptible to future challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cWest Virginia may well have satisfied its burden and seen its ban upheld. The point, rather, is that this Court\u2019s equal protection precedents require a very different approach \u2026\u00a0than the one the majority follows today,\u201d\u00a0Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.<\/p>\n

Demonstrators hold signs in support of a trans athlete ban outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday. AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite<\/p>\n

The liberals contended that the high court\u00a0should have just stuck with West Virginia plaintiff\u00a0Becky Pepper-Jackson\u2019s concession that \u201csex\u201d under the Title IX statute means \u201cbiological sex\u201d assigned at birth, and not decided the constitutional question.<\/p>\n

\u201cI agree that\u00a0B. P.\u00a0J\u2019s\u00a0Title IX claim fails, although on a narrower basis than\u00a0that on which the majority relies.\u00a0As for B. P. J.\u2019s\u00a0equal protection claim, however, the\u00a0majority, at this stage of the litigation, gets the answer wrong,\u201d Sotomayor added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Idaho, aspiring\u00a0Boise State University\u00a0track and cross-country\u00a0athlete Lindsay Hecox challenged the state\u2019s\u00a0Fairness in Women\u2019s Sports Act<\/a>\u00a0citing the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War and meant to extend equal rights to former slaves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lindsay Hecox sued Idaho in 2020 over its law on transgender athletes. Lindsay Hecox<\/p>\n

In West Virginia,\u00a0Pepper-Jackson\u2019s\u00a0mother fought against the state\u2019s\u00a0Save Women\u2019s Sports Act<\/a>\u00a0after her child underwent\u00a0gender reassignment surgery\u00a0during the third grade,\u00a0prior to\u00a0going through male puberty.<\/a><\/p>\n

President\u00a0Trump used\u00a0Title IX as the basis for his executive order last year<\/a>\u00a0targeting states that allow transgender women to compete in women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

Notably, in his concurrence, Republican-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas went further than the majority and declared that \u201cMen and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or\u00a0girls, even if they believe that they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lindsay Hecox, an aspiring track and field athlete, challenged Idaho\u2019s Fairness in Women\u2019s Sports Act. ACLU \/ Joshua Roper<\/p>\n

\u201cSex is an immutable \u2018biological\u2019\u00a0characteristic \u2026\u00a0it is binary;\u00a0and\u00a0\u2018man\u2019 and \u2018woman,\u2019 \u2018boy\u2019 and \u2018girl,\u2019 are the terms that\u00a0correspond to adults and children of each sex,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The majority opinion\u00a0steered clear of\u00a0making sweeping pronouncements on transgenderism.<\/p>\n

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The decision in the cases Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B. P. J. marks the first time the Supreme Court has\u00a0dealt with\u00a0the fraught culture war issue of transgender competition in girls\u2019 sports.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Supreme Court allowed states to ban or restrict transgender surgeries or hormonal treatments for minors.<\/p>\n

Trump cheered the decision Tuesday as a \u201cbig win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States Supreme Court\u00a0just\u00a0RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN\u2019S SPORTS.\u00a0Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!\u201d he posted on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, Kavanaugh\u2019s opinion doesn\u2019t bar transgender females from competing in biological sports completely \u2014but refers the question to individual states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The\u00a0Supreme Court\u00a0ruled Tuesday that states can bar\u00a0transgender female competitors from\u00a0playing girls\u2019 sports\u00a0in a landmark decision with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27524,9,11,10,49,51,50,87,2973,28966,11389,58,17000,54385],"class_list":["post-282744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-idaho","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-politics","tag-supreme-court","tag-transgender-athletes","tag-transgender-rights","tag-us-news","tag-west-virginia","tag-womens-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}