\n<\/p>\n
For years, state laws prohibiting transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams matching their gender identity have proliferated, along with legal challenges to these bans.<\/p>\n
But now, the U.S. Supreme Court may settle what\u2019s become a national controversy.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the high court considered the legality of the bans in Idaho and West Virginia.<\/p>\n
In more than three hours of oral arguments, the justices and attorneys debated when there should be exceptions allowed to broad legislation that discriminates against specific groups, how the presence or absence of medical testosterone regulation and biological performance advantages affect the legality of these prohibitions, whether sex should be defined as biological sex under Title IX, and what Title IX\u2019s allowance for sex-segregated teams means if transgender women are allowed to play on women\u2019s teams.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t think we should have an operating definition of sex in Title IX?\u201d Chief Justice John Roberts said at one point to an attorney representing a trans child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing the students who have challenged the bans said the cases were about access to athletics for a small number of transgender people, including those who are regulating their testosterone.\u00a0 Kathleen R. Hartnett, an attorney challenging the Idaho ban, said her client \u201chas suppressed her testosterone for over a year and taken estrogen,\u201d saying the Idaho law \u201cfails heightened scrutiny\u201d as applied to such trans women \u201cwho have no sex-based biological advantage as compared to birth sex females.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twenty-seven states ban trans women from participating at some level of athletics, according to lawyers both defending and arguing against such prohibitions. Repeatedly Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked whether states that don\u2019t have such bans are breaking the law or should be allowed discretion\u2014suggesting he\u2019s considering a ruling affecting more than the restrictions in Idaho and West Virginia.<\/p>\n
Kavanaugh asked whether states without prohibitions are violating Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and whether sex under Title IX could reasonably be interpreted to allow different states to define it differently. He said trans participation can harm girls who don\u2019t make the cutoff for teams, but also expressed hesitancy to rule nationally, asking why the court should\u00a0 \u201cconstitutionalize a rule for the whole country while there\u2019s still \u2026 uncertainty and debate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Samuel Alito didn\u2019t ask many questions, but when he did, he homed in on how sex should be defined under Title IX. He asked how the court could determine discrimination based on sex without determining what sex means. He also asked whether female athletes who oppose transgender women on their teams should be considered \u201cdeluded\u201d or \u201cbigots.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At one point, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that \u201cI\u2019ve been wondering what\u2019s straightforward after all this discussion.\u201d Regarding whether puberty blockers and testosterone suppressants\u00a0eliminate all competitive advantage, Gorsuch said there\u2019s a \u201cscientific dispute about the efficacy of some of these treatments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Almost a year ago, long after West Virginia and Idaho passed their laws, President Trump signed an executive order banning trans women from participating in women\u2019s sports and threatening universities with loss of federal funding if they disobey. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy restricting \u201ccompetition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has since pressured institutions to further bar trans women from sports. In April, for example, the Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a trans woman to compete on a women\u2019s sports team\u2014presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, in accord with NCAA policies at that time.<\/p>\n
The court took up two cases Tuesday, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. These suits, which center on whether anti\u2013transgender participation laws violate Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s Equal Protection Clause, have been ongoing for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass a law outright banning trans girls and women from participating in school sports matching their gender identity. Lindsay Hecox is a trans woman who was nevertheless able to participate in women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
In 2024, her lawyers wrote that she tried out for the university\u2019s women\u2019s cross-country and track teams but didn\u2019t make it, \u201cconsistently running slower than her cisgender women competitors.\u201d Her attorneys stress that her \u201ccirculating testosterone levels are typical of cisgender women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hecox\u2019s attorneys had opposed the Supreme Court taking up the case, previously writing that it\u2019s \u201cabout 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.\u201d Then, in September 2025, her lawyers argued the case had become moot, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and \u201ccommitted not to try out for or participate in any school-sponsored women\u2019s sports covered by\u201d the state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the five years since this case commenced, Ms. Hecox has faced significant challenges that have affected her both personally and academically,\u201d including an illness and her father\u2019s death, her lawyers wrote. They said she\u2019s \u201ccome under negative public scrutiny from certain quarters because of this litigation, and she believes that such continued\u2014and likely intensified\u2014attention in the coming school year will distract her from her schoolwork and prevent her from meeting her academic and personal goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile playing women\u2019s sports is important to Ms. Hecox, her top priority is graduating from college and living a healthy and safe life,\u201d they wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But attorneys defending the Idaho law have argued not to dismiss the case\u2014a position that may allow a national ruling from the high court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices heard arguments in two cases concerning trans athletes.<\/p>\n
Ryan Quinn | Inside Higher Ed<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Alan M. Hurst, Idaho\u2019s solicitor general, argued that the case wasn\u2019t moot, saying Hecox\u2019s plans about whether to play sports have changed before and may change again. Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged this, saying Hurst was asking the court to \u201cforce an unwilling plaintiff \u2026 to continue prosecuting this case.\u201d\u00a0 Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said \u201cit\u2019s a little odd that a defendant would not want a case dismissed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hurst argued that Idaho\u2019s law wasn\u2019t about excluding transgender people, saying the Legislature there instead \u201cwanted to keep women\u2019s sports women-only.\u201d He also said testosterone doesn\u2019t reliably suppress performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSports are assigned by sex because sex is what matters in sports,\u201d Hurst said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether Hurst was arguing to allow separation by biological sex of even 6-year-olds in sports. Hurst replied that even at that age, boys have a small advantage, but co-ed sports could be an option.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The West Virginia case was filed by the mother of Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a transgender sixth grader, back in 2021. Judges blocked enforcement of the Mountain State\u2019s law against the student.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn West Virginia\u2019s telling, it passed [its law] to \u2018save women\u2019s sports\u2019 by staving off an impending tidal wave of \u2018bigger, faster, and stronger males\u2019 from stealing championships, scholarships, and opportunities from female athletes,\u201d the student\u2019s lawyers wrote. \u201cIn reality, West Virginia\u2019s law banned exactly one sixth-grade transgender girl from participating on her school\u2019s cross-country and track-and-field teams with her friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her attorneys wrote that the sports she\u2019s participated in are non-contact, and that she \u201chas 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
They wrote that she \u201cwants to play sports for the same reasons most kids do: to have fun and make friends as part of a team.\u201d She\u2019s participated in post-season shot put and discus, \u201cwhere her performance is well within the range of cisgender girls her age,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
Lawyers defending the West Virginia law, though, wrote that \u201cmale athletes identifying as female are increasingly competing in women\u2019s sports, erasing the opportunities Title IX ensured.\u201d They wrote that \u201cwomen and girls have lost places on sports teams, surrendered spots on championship podiums, and suffered injuries competing against bigger, faster, and stronger males.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michael R. Williams, West Virginia\u2019s solicitor general, said the state\u2019s law \u201cis indifferent to gender identity because sports are indifferent to gender identity,\u201d and said \u201cwe don\u2019t have an actual transgender exclusion.\u201d He also argued that Title IX defines sex as biological sex because that was the understanding at the time Congress passed it.<\/p>\n
Barrett suggested West Virginia\u2019s arguments could be used by a state to argue for separate math classrooms if it produced a study saying women\u2019s presence in calculus was holding men back. Gorsuch made similar arguments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In both cases Tuesday, the federal government defended the state laws. Hashim M. Mooppan, the U.S. principal deputy solicitor general, said Title IX regulations \u201csay you can separate based on sex \u2026 the circulating testosterone levels are just legally irrelevant under the regulations.\u201d He also said transgender women aren\u2019t \u201cbeing excluded from participating on the boys team.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
During and after the oral arguments, hundreds of proponents for trans athletes and opponents held dueling rallies right next to each other outside the Supreme Court, each with their own sound systems and speakers. Education Secretary Linda McMahon was among those who spoke in favor of the state bans.<\/p>\n
Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks outside the US Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.<\/p>\n
Photo by Oliver Contreras \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
In her remarks, McMahon praised a legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, that was defending the bans, and touted the Trump administration\u2019s actions to \u201crestore common sense by returning sanity to the sexes.\u201d She also criticized the Biden administration\u2019s regulations that declared that sex-based discrimination, which is barred under Title IX, includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A federal judge vacated those Title IX regulations in early 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn just four years, the Biden Administration reversed decades of progress, twisting the law to argue that \u2018sex\u2019 is not defined by objective biological reality, but by the subjective notion of \u2018gender identity,\u2019\u2019\u2019 she said. (The Title IX regulations took effect in August 2024 but federal courts had already blocked them in dozens of states.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
McMahon added that while the Supreme Court deliberates, the administration will continue enforcing Title IX \u201cas it was intended, rooted in biological reality to ensure fairness, safety, and equal access to education programs for women and girls across our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs President Trump has made clear, America is in its Golden Age, one where female students and athletes have equal access to fair and safe competitions and female-only intimate spaces, free from divisive and discriminatory ideologies,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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