The Supreme Court held oral arguments in two cases involving transgender athletes in January.
Ryan Quinn | Within Higher Ed
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws that bar transgender girls and women from playing on same-sex sports teams, upholding more than half of states’ bans against transgender inclusion.
“Title IX allows schools to offer separate sports teams for women and men defined by natural sex,” wrote Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the majority opinion of six Republican-appointed judges. These three leaders put forward opinions that are partly in agreement and partly contradictory.
Kavanaugh wrote that “the word ‘sex’ in title IX” and related statutes “cannot be plainly construed to refer to anything other than natural sex.”
“The common definition of the word ‘sex’ during the legal era of the early 1970s was biological sex and not sex, especially in sports,” Kavanaugh said. “Furthermore, Title IX’s laws permit separate sports teams precisely because of the inherent differences between natural men and natural women.”
Kavanaugh noted that the decision does not affect state or federal policies that currently allow trans women to compete. girls’ and women’s sports teams, which are the subject of other lawsuits. “Furthermore, nothing in this proposal should be interpreted as addressing or limiting the participation of natural women in male or mixed sports teams,” he added.
The court’s ruling likely won’t have an immediate impact on many trans college athletes and institutions, as the NCAA has barred trans female students from competing in the competition based on their gender identity. Still, it’s a blow to trans students and their advocates, and the decision supports the Trump administration, which has worked to roll back the rights of trans students.
Twenty-seven states prohibit trans women from participating in some level of athletics, according to advocates who both defend and argue against such laws. During President Trump’s first term, Idaho became the first state to pass a law completely banning girls and women from joining women’s groups.
In February 2025, shortly after returning to the White House, Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports and threatened to cut funding to universities if they allowed them. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy banning competition from “female student-athletes at birth.”
In April 2025, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a transgender woman to compete on a women’s sports team—a possible reference to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, according to NCAA policies at the time.
While the court’s opinion focused on athletics, the Trump administration has opened a wide range of investigations into whether policies that support transgender students, such as allowing them to enter the bathroom that matches their gender, violate Title IX.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the decision “cements” the administration’s Title IX reforms.
“This is an incredible victory, and we look forward to ensuring that every educational institution in America follows the law of the land,” said McMahon.
The court ruled in two long-running cases: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ Both focused on whether anti-cooperative laws violate Title IX and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The federal government joined these red state attorneys and attorneys general in defending the laws.
Idaho passed its law in 2020. Lindsay Hecox is a trans woman and yet she was able to participate in women’s club running and club soccer at Boise State University because she sued that same year and the district court blocked enforcement against her.
In 2024, her lawyers wrote that she tried out for university women’s cross country teams but was unsuccessful, “always going slower than her cisgender female competitors.” Her lawyers insisted that her “circulating testosterone levels are normal for cisgender women.”
Hecox’s lawyers have challenged the Supreme Court to take up the case, previously writing that “it is about the four-year sentence that opposes the application of [the Idaho law] in honor of one woman, allowing her to take part in club running and football.” This past September, her attorneys argued that the lawsuit was a miracle, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and “pledged not to try out or participate in any school-sponsored women’s sports that comply” with state law.
But Idaho’s attorney general said the case must go forward — even though Hecox was the one who filed the case in the first place, against the state.
In West Virginia, Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a sixth-grader, had intended to compete in cross country and track and field, but she would not be able to do so because of the state ban passed in 2021. His mother sued, and a jury blocked enforcement of the Mountain State law against the student.
Pepper-Jackson’s attorneys wrote that the sports she participated in are unrelated to them, and that she “received puberty-delaying drugs and sex-affirming estrogen that allowed her to experience a hormonal puberty similar to girls, with all the physiological musculoskeletal characteristics of cisgender girls and none of the gender-related characteristics of boys.” They also previously wrote that she participated in the postseason shot put and discus, “where her performance is in the middle of the range for cisgender girls.”
Last month, Pepper-Jackson won the Class AAA girls state championship in the shot put.
