United States Supreme Court, October 29, 2024 (Photo: Jane Norman/States Nerwsroom)
WASHINGTON – United States Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a state law barring transgender athletes from participating on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
The decision stems from calls for bans Idaho and West Virginia and represents a major setback for transgender rights across the country. The opinion was also published in connection with the implementation by President Donald Trump’s administration of a broad program against transgender people, which goes beyond athletics.
The nation’s highest court found in a 6-3 vote that the bans imposed in Idaho and West Virginia did not violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause – a key issue in both cases before the court.
The court was unanimous that Title IX, the landmark 1972 law that required sports teams to provide equal coverage for male and female students, did not block bans like those in Idaho and West Virginia.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, rejected the argument by Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender West Virginia girl in the case, that excluding transgender girls from men’s teams violates the 1974 Title IX amendment requiring schools to set “reasonable” rules for participation in sports.
West Virginia’s law – similar to those imposed by 27 other states, the International Olympic Committee, the NCAA and other sports organizations – was at least reasonable, Kavanaugh said.
“Whether biological males can play on women’s and girls’ sports teams may be a political issue,” he wrote. “But the legal question for Title IX purposes is whether West Virginia can limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological women. Because of the text and history, West Virginia can do that.”
Liberals would impose more control
The court’s three liberal justices agreed that Title IX does not preclude laws such as those in West Virginia and Idaho.
However, they disagreed on the issue of equal protection and would remand the case to a federal trial court in West Virginia for further fact-finding.
“By failing to take this modest step, the majority errs twofold,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
There is an “unresolved factual dispute” over whether transgender and cisgender girls “are similarly situated,” Sotomayor said. And most cited “scientific uncertainty” to show too much deference to West Virginia. Both cases could have been resolved in lower courts, Sotomayor wrote.
“None of the above statements suggest what the ultimate outcome of this litigation would have been, or even what it should have been had the majority allowed the courts below to make the missing factual findings and had those courts properly applied heightened scrutiny to the benefit of those facts,” she said. “Rather, the point is that the Court’s equal protection precedents require a very different approach.”
Idaho Law
The Idaho case challenged the Gem State’s 2020 bill, which categorically bans transgender athletes from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
Lindsay Hecox sued the ban in 2020, just months before the law — the first of its kind in the country — went into effect.
Hecox wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross country teams at Boise State University, but Idaho law prevented her from doing so because she was transgender.
A federal court in Idaho stopped the law from going into effect later in 2020. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in 2023, but later adjusted its scope in 2024 to apply only to Hecox and not other athletes.
In July 2024, Idaho filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Hecox later asked both the Idaho federal court and the Supreme Court to drop the case.
Although a federal judge in Idaho rejected the attempt in October, the Supreme Court put the request on hold until it heard oral arguments in January.
Idaho Republicans cheer
Several top elected officials in Idaho, all Republicans, issued statements praising Tuesday’s ruling.
Gov. Brad Little noted in an emailed statement that the Idaho bill was the first of its kind at the state level.
“We are leading the nation in supporting generations of women and men who have fought hard to maintain Title IX protections and keep girls and women safe,” he said. “I want to especially thank the Legislature and Idaho State Representative Barbara Ehardt for her leadership on this issue, which is of paramount importance to female athletes across Idaho and the country. This is a historic moment for common sense!”
Ehardt, who sponsored Idaho’s ban in the state Legislature, called the decision the end of an “incredible journey.”
“I said from the beginning that this case would end up in the Supreme Court, and when it did, I had the honor of sitting in this courtroom and listening,” Ehardt said. “I expected that my legislation, and therefore Title IX, would be upheld. Opportunities for girls and women should never be confused with men’s feelings!”
West Virginia Law
The West Virginia case involved a 2021 Mountain State bill that also bars transgender athletes from participating on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
Pepper-Jackson wanted to try out for the girls’ cross-country team when she entered middle school, but state law prevented her from doing so because she was transgender.
In 2021, Pepper-Jackson’s mother sued on her behalf.
A federal appeals court in 2024 barred the state from enforcing the ban, prompting West Virginia to ask the Supreme Court for a review.
Trump’s anti-transgender agenda
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has sought at the federal level to ban trans athletes from participating in women’s sports teams consistent with their gender identity, including by executive order Trump signed it last year.
This executive order made it happen policy United States to “withdraw all funding from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, endanger, humiliate, silence, and deprive women and girls of their privacy.”
NCAA he quickly changed his policy comply with an order limiting “competition in women’s sports to student-athletes who were assigned exclusively female at birth.”
Trump has signed other executive orders targeting transgender people, including this one do it “U.S. policy recognizing two sexes, male and female,” restrict access to gender affirming care for children and try to bar openly transgender service members from the US Army.
Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social in which he praised the judges.
“BIG VICTORY: THE US Supreme Court Just RULED AGAINST MEN ELIGIBLE WOMEN IN SPORTS,” he wrote. “Wow! This eliminates this absurd situation!!!”
A different reaction
Reaction poured in Tuesday from lawmakers and other officials, both for and against the court’s ruling.
Many of those who supported the decision, including U.S. House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, offered some version of the “women’s sports are for women” declaration.
“Unfortunately, radical gender ideology, reinforced by the policies pushed by the Biden-Harris administration, has eroded Title IX protections. As a result, the very female athletes the bill was intended to empower have been sidelined in the name of ‘equality,'” Walberg, a Republican from Michigan, said in a statement.
He added that he was “grateful” to the judges and said that Republicans on his committee “will always stand by women athletes.”
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito made a similar statement in a social media post
“Girls’ sports are for girls. It’s common sense,” the West Virginia Republican said. “I am grateful that SCOTUS upheld West Virginia’s law protecting female athletes.”
Critics of the ruling vowed to continue efforts to provide protections for transgender people.
League of Women Voters chief executive Celina Stewar said the decision “sends a dangerous message that some female students are less worthy of dignity, opportunity and belonging.”
“Policies that deliberately target and marginalize young people simply because of who they are weaken our democracy and violate the values of fairness and inclusion that define who we are as a nation,” she said. “The league stands in solidarity with all students affected and we remain committed to making equality a reality for all.”
U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat who co-chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said in a social media post that the decision focused on “whether LGBTQ+ rights are civil rights protected by federal law.”
“The answer is YES – and we will fight until it is clear that this is the law of the land!” she added.
Leaders of blue states that do not have laws like the ones upheld Tuesday said they would not be affected.
“Today’s ruling, while predictable, represents another disturbing affront to personal liberties by giving states a license to discriminate,” said Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. he said. “The Court was clear that this decision had no impact on the state’s decision to include transgender athletes and, as such, would have no impact on Department of Justice v. Maine.”
