Supreme Court likely to uphold state bans on trans athletes competing on girls’ sports teams
WASHINGTON— Supreme Court justices appeared poised Tuesday to uphold state laws banning transgender athletes from competing on school sports teams for girls.
Idaho, West Virginia and 25 other Republican-led states say a student’s biological sex at birth should determine who can play on girls’ or boys’ teams.
They say it’s unfair to girls to allow biological males to compete with girls in sports like track and field or swimming. “Biological males are, on average, larger, stronger, and faster than biological females,” West Virginia’s state attorneys said.
Although the court’s conservative majority court is likely to rule on behalf of those states, the justices said they preferred a narrow decision limited to those laws.
If so, such a decision for red states would not directly change the law in California and more than a dozen Democratic-led states that ban discrimination based on gender identity. These laws protect the rights of transgender girls to compete on girls’ teams.
A similar dispute came before the court last year.
Conservative judges then ruled that Tennessee and other red states could ban gender-affirming drugs and medical treatments for teens suffering from gender dysphoria.
The 6-3 majority said this was not unconstitutional discrimination based on the youth’s transgender status. However, this decision did not eliminate the conflicting law in California.
In recent months, the Trump administration has been involved in transgender sports cases on the West Virginia and Idaho side.
But lawyers argued that only the Constitution allows states to exclude transgender girls from girls’ teams. Their lawyers said there was no need for them to do so.
Even a West Virginia lawyer agreed. “There is ample room for California to have a different interpretation,” state attorney Michael R. Williams told the court.
Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan said these Democratic states are “violating Title IX,” the education law that allows separate sports teams for boys and girls. But he said the court should not rule on that question now.
Last year, in response to the court’s ruling on gender-affirming care, President Trump cut federal funding to hospitals and medical facilities that provide that care.
A decision supporting restrictions on transgender athletes could encourage the Trump administration to threaten Democratic states with loss of federal education funding.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, now 15, is waging a solo legal battle to compete on her school’s track and field team in Bridgeport, W.Va.
The woman, who identified as male at birth, says she is the only transgender girl competing in her state and has been the target of complaints and protests.
Becky participated in cross country as a sixth grader in middle school and described herself as slow. His lawyers told the court it was “routinely placed near the back of the package”.
He only gains after reaching high school.
In 2024, “BPJ placed in the top three and won the most in every track and field event in which he competed,” state attorneys said. Last spring, “BPJ knocked female competitors out of the state tournament by focusing on strength events, then finished third in the state in the discus throw and eighth in the shot put while competing against much older female athletes,” they said.
He won in the shot put and discus “through hard work and practice,” said his attorney, Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union.
She said she “took puberty-delaying drugs and gender-affirming estrogen, which allowed her to enter the hormonal puberty typical of a typical girl.”
He urged the court to rule that Becky had no physical advantage due to her biology.
But judges didn’t seem willing to rule on puberty blockers.
