The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2026, that West Virginia and Idaho did not violate the Constitution by preventing transgender students from joining female sports teams, and that states can restrict who participates on women’s and girls sports teams based on a student’s sex assigned at birth.
This ruling, focused squarely on transgender students participating on single-sex sports teams, does not resolve other major questions that are important to trans rights. These issues include what bathrooms transgender or nonbinary students can use at school, as well as whether transgender individuals can update their names and gender markers on identity documents.
The court folded two related cases that address sports team participation at the middle, high school and college levels – Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. – into one single decision that resolved both. The justices ruled 6-3 on the cases.
This ruling backs 25 other states that, over the past few years, have passed new laws restricting transgender students from participating on female sports teams.
Twenty-one states also have some sort of restriction on transgender and nonbinary students using school bathrooms designated by sex.
As a legal scholar and expert on LGBTQ+ rights, I believe that based on the court’s reasoning, it is likely that the conservative majority on the court would uphold states’ right to restrict school bathroom use based on sex assigned at birth. However, this ruling leaves bigger questions regarding transgender students’ broader rights in school, at work and elsewhere unanswered.
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A political flash point
There were estimated to be fewer than 10 transgender athletes who participated in collegiate athletics in 2024.
But the issue of transgender students participating on sports teams is a hot-button issue for the Trump administration and Republicans, who argue that transgender female students have a biological advantage in competitive sports over athletes assigned female at birth.
The issue is nuanced and depends on factors including the athletes’ age and whether they have undergone gender-affirming hormonal therapy.
Some recent research shows that transgender female athletes who have undergone gender affirming hormone therapy have a comparable level of strength to cisgender female athletes.
What the rulings covered
At issue in these two Supreme Court cases were what protections Title IX – which bars sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding – as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment gave transgender students.
Little v. Hecox challenged Idaho’s 2020 law that allows only students whose sex was designated female at birth to participate on girls and women’s school sports team.
Lindsay Hecox, a transgender female student at Boise State University, alongside a cisgender student, filed a lawsuit against the state in 2020. Hecox, now 24, could not try out for the school’s track and cross country team because of the law. She instead ran at the club level.
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., a transgender middle school student athlete named Becky Pepper-Jackson similarly sued the state so she could continue participating in track and field. Pepper-Jackson won a state title in girls shot put in May 2026.
The state’s 2021 Save Women’s Sports Act requires public middle schools, high schools and colleges to designate all school athletic teams by biological sex.
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Understanding Title IX and how it applies
The Supreme Court determined that states are permitted to restrict sports team participation under Title IX and its regulations, which explicitly permit schools to have separate male and female sports teams.
The opinion started by emphasizing there are “enduring” physical differences between males and females, and that if there were unified sports teams, females could be at a disadvantage.
“Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable: Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition,” the court ruled in its opinion on West Virginia v. B.P.J., authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the ruling.
Pepper-Jackson argued that this part of Title IX did not have relevance to her case because she had taken puberty blockers and never gone through male puberty.
As a result, she argued, she did not have heightened levels of testosterone or other physical differences that could raise the concern of a competitive advantage over cis female students in sports. She also posed no physical safety concerns for her teammates.
The court’s majority rejected this argument, saying that the Title IX regulations did not speak to this issue. The court recognized that although the laws might produce unfair results for someone like Pepper-Jackson, this did not make the restrictions improper.
The court added that Pepper-Jackson and other students in her position need to take up their concerns with state legislatures.
The court’s liberal wing – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed with the conservative majority that the laws did not violate Title IX.
The role of the equal protection clause
The court also addressed the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that the government must apply its laws fairly and cannot treat people differently without a valid reason.
The court’s conservative majority ruled that the laws distinguished based on sex, and as a result they scrutinized the laws more carefully. However, the court concluded that the athletic restrictions nevertheless passed constitutional muster.
Here, too, the court’s majority cited the interests of safety and competitive fairness as important justifications for the laws.
The liberal justices disagreed with their colleagues’ analysis. In their view, the laws were too broad to satisfy the Constitution, because they banned transgender girls who had never experienced male puberty from female sports teams.
A side step
The decision is a narrow one. The court went to great lengths to emphasize that it was focused on sports, and that the court was not being asked about transgender people’s rights more broadly.
In the court’s telling, sports are unique because competition depends on the physiology and physical differences between those assigned male and female at birth. That is important, because there are few circumstances in which the physical differences between males and females continue to be relevant.
In the past, many occupations and schools were sex-segregated. Today, bathrooms, school sports teams, changing facilities, some college residence halls, juvenile detention centers and prisons are among the last places that remain segregated by sex.
Moreover, the court avoided ruling on the constitutional standard that should apply when transgender people are discriminated against. Under constitutional doctrine, courts will more closely scrutinize laws that discriminate against historically powerless minority groups, such as people of color and women.
One of the open questions in transgender rights litigation is whether transgender people qualify for that more searching review.
This case did not resolve that issue.
The court’s narrow ruling on transgender athletes ultimately did not resolve other key issues for transgender rights, which the court will likely be asked to address at a later date.
