In a stunning smack down, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled unanimously on June 30 that states may ban transgender females from participating in sports competitions for females at schools which receive federal funding.
While there were dissents from the court’s most liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson—all nine agreed in the judgment.
The result was widely predicted following the oral arguments in January, but no one guessed it would be unanimous in the judgment.
The decision emerged out of appeals from two states—Idaho and West Virginia—but will clear the way for enforcement of existing bans in 25 other states with similar bans. Nearly all secondary schools, colleges and universities receive federal funding for various purposes.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the decision consolidating two appeals, said one could not “plausibly” interpret Title IX, a federal law that bans discrimination based on sex in educational programs, to be anything other than “biological sex.”
“The ordinary meaning of the term ‘sex’ at the time of enactment in the early 1970s was biological sex and not gender identity, particularly in the sports context,” wrote Kavanaugh. Title IX does not say “schools must allow certain biological males toparticipate in women’s and girls’ sports. Nor do the statute or regulations say that schools must make an exception for those biological males who identify as female and have taken puberty blockers or hormones.”
In reaching the opinion, the court had to deal with its 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch for a 6 to 3 majority, said a federal law (Title VII) barring discrimination on the basis of “sex” in employment also prohibits discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and “gender status.” Kavanaugh stated simply that employment and sports are “vastly different.”
The court ruled that the state bans on trans females in female sports do not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, because, Kavanaugh wrote, the government has an important interest in ensuring the “safety and competitive fairness” of women’s sports. The decision also said that it does not matter whether some trans females take puberty blockers early in life.
The Supreme Court consolidated the two cases because, while each involves a transgender female athlete, one fact in their cases differed. Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, who challenged the West Virginia law, started taking puberty blocking medications in the third grade and never went through the bodily changes that males go through during puberty. Thus, her attorneys argued, she does not have any biological advantage over cisgender female athletes. Lindsay Hecox, 24, who challenged the law in Idaho, began experiencing gender dysphoria in elementary school but did not begin to take drugs to suppress testosterone until her first year in college. The state of Idaho passed a blanket ban against trans-female athletes in school just as Hecox was preparing to try out for her school’s soccer and track-and-field teams.
Both athletes argued that the bans violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and Title IX of the federal Education Amendments Act. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, a state must justify treating two people differently under the law. Under Title IX, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance….” Nearly all secondary schools and about 90 percent of colleges and universities receive federal funding for various purposes.
Both the Fourth and Ninth circuit U.S. Courts of Appeals ruled against the state bans, and both West Virginia (in West Virginia v. BPJ) and Idaho (in Little v. Hecox) appealed to the Supreme Court.
During oral argument in January, several justices said they considered the record unclear or underdeveloped. They did not think Congress had clearly defined the word “sex” in 1972 when it passed Title IX.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Bostock v. Clayton County, that “on the basis of sex” in Title VII (barring discrimination based on sex in the workplace), includes prohibition of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
In February 2025, President Trump signed an executive order saying federal funds would be rescinded from any federally funded educational program that “results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls” in sports “and deprives them of privacy.” And the Department of Justice under Trump argued in favor of the state bans on trans females playing in female sports.
The West Virginia and Idaho appeals (West Virginia v. BPJ and Little (Idaho) v. Hecox) were two of the last four decisions released in the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 session.
They were also two of three transgender related appeals this session. In Chiles v. Colorado, an 8 to 1 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado could not ban therapists from recommending their clients under 18 undergo “conversion therapy” to convert from LGBTQ to straight. The court said the Colorado law regulated speech based on viewpoint, violating the therapist’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
The good news of the session, from the LGBTQ perspective, included three appeals involving attempts by parents to insist schools report to parents any information they have about a student’s exploration of sexual orientation or gender identity. The court declined to take up those cases.
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