States Can Ban Trans Girls From Sports Competition, Supreme Court Rules

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan concurred with the majority in part and dissented in part.

Attorneys for Lindsay Hecox and Becky Pepper-Jackson, transgender student-athletes in Idaho and West Virginia, had argued that the bans violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments, which bars sex discrimination in education.

In 2020, Hecox, then a Boise State University student, sued Idaho after it became the first state in the nation to pass a law banning transgender women and girls from participating on girls’ sports teams. She alleged that the ban violated her rights by preventing her from trying out for the university’s NCAA track and cross country teams as a freshman. Hecox’s case was also joined by a cisgender high school athlete, who said she feared that her sex might be “disputed” under the act.

Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old shot put and discus athlete in West Virginia, sued the state in 2021 over its similar “Save Women in Sports” Law, which prohibited her from joining her middle school’s track and cross country teams.

The court’s decision means Idaho’s and West Virginia’s laws barring transgender girls from girls’ sports teams — which have been replicated in 25 other states — can be enforced.

But the narrow ruling, which only applies to Hecox and Pepper-Jackson’s specific cases, also allows states, like California, to adopt policies that require schools to allow students to participate in sex-segregated activities, including sports, consistent with their gender identity.

“Today’s limited decision means that states and schools across the country still have the power to make reasonable rules to ensure fairness without banning all transgender girls,” Shannon Minter, National Center for LGBTQ Rights legal director, said in a statement.

Dale Melchert, an attorney with the Transgender Law Center, said courts will likely rely on the ruling broadly in other cases surrounding trans rights — like litigation currently playing out across the country regarding federal funding for schools with protections for transgender students and healthcare centers that offer gender-affirming care.

It could also affect transgender athletes in other states in the future, as anti-LGBTQ+ activists are pushing similar “model legislation” in legislatures that haven’t adopted bans.

Tuesday’s ruling, he said, “takes off the table one of the powerful legal tools we have at our disposal to advocate for trans communities.”

“If the Supreme Court says that the Constitution doesn’t protect trans people, that is clearly devastating, regardless of whether you live in a state that is supportive or not,” he continued.