Supreme Court Upholds State Bans on Transgender Athletes in School Sports

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that state laws barring transgender girls and women from school athletic competition do not violate the Constitution. Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion, declaring that states may legally reserve women's and girls' sports for biological females. On the Title IX question — whether the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education protects transgender athletes — the court was unanimous in finding it does not.

The ruling consolidated challenges from two states: West Virginia, featuring 16-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, a high school sophomore who has identified as a girl since age 8, holds a state-issued birth certificate listing her as female, and progressed from a back-of-the-pack middle school runner to state shot put champion — winning last month's title by 2 feet. The Idaho case centered on Lindsay Hecox, who sought to try out for women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University but, according to her own attorney, was cut because she was too slow to make the squad.

The decision effectively ratifies bans already on the books in more than two dozen Republican-led states and will almost certainly extend to similar laws nationwide. What remains legally unresolved are challenges in states like Connecticut and California that take the opposite approach, explicitly permitting transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity.

The ruling arrives atop a cascade of institutional changes already underway: the NCAA reversed its transgender inclusion policy after President Trump signed an executive order targeting their participation, and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee banned transgender women from women's events. NCAA president Charlie Baker had told Congress in 2024 that he knew of only about 10 transgender athletes among more than 500,000 college competitors — a vanishingly small number that nonetheless ignited a sweeping policy and legal firestorm.

Public opinion has shifted notably in favor of restrictions: an October 2025 AP-NORC poll found roughly 6 in 10 U.S. adults support requiring transgender youth to compete on teams matching their birth sex, while only about 2 in 10 opposed such rules. The sports world itself remains divided, with figures like Martina Navratilova and Kerri Walsh Jennings backing the bans and soccer and basketball stars including Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and Breanna Stewart supporting transgender inclusion.