Supreme Court considers law banning transgender women from participating in sports

Over the years, state laws barring transgender girls and women from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity have grown, and those bans have faced legal challenges.

But now, the U.S. Supreme Court may resolve the nationwide dispute.

On Tuesday, the high court considered the legality of the bans in Idaho and West Virginia.

During more than three hours of oral arguments, the justices and attorneys debated when exceptions should be allowed to broad legislation that discriminates against certain groups, how the presence or absence of medical testosterone regulation and biological performance advantages affects the legality of those bans, whether sex should be defined as biological sex under Title IX, and what Title IX’s allowances for gender-segregated teams would mean if transgender women were allowed to play on women’s teams.

“Don’t you think we should have a working definition of gender in Title IX?” Chief Justice John Roberts once told a lawyer representing a transgender child.

Lawyers representing students challenging the ban say the cases involve opportunities for a small number of transgender people to participate in sports, including those who are regulating their testosterone. Kathleen R. Hartnett, the attorney who challenged the Idaho ban, said her client “has been suppressing testosterone and taking estrogen for over a year,” and said Idaho’s law “fails to provide rigorous scrutiny as it applies to transgender women who have “no sex-based biological advantage over women of their birth sex.”

Twenty-seven states ban transgender women from participating in some level of sports, according to attorneys who defend and oppose such bans. Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly asked Tuesday whether states without such bans were violating the law or should be allowed discretion — a sign he was considering a ruling that would have implications beyond the limits in Idaho and West Virginia.

Kavanaugh asked whether states without a ban violate Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and whether sex under Title IX could reasonably be interpreted to allow different states to define it differently. He said transgender participation could harm girls who don’t make the team, but he also expressed hesitancy to rule nationwide and asked why the court should “set a rule for the entire country while there is still … uncertainty and debate.”

Justice Samuel Alito didn’t ask many questions, but when he did, he focused on how gender should be defined under Title IX. He asked how courts could determine discrimination on the basis of sex without being certain of what sex meant. He also asked whether female athletes who object to trans women joining teams should be considered “duped” or “bigots.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch said at one point, “I’ve been wondering, after all this discussion, what’s straightforward.” On whether puberty blockers and testosterone inhibitors would eliminate all competitive advantages, Gorsuch said there is “scientific controversy about the efficacy of some of these treatments.”

About a year ago, long after West Virginia and Idaho passed laws, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports and threatening colleges with losing federal funding if they did not comply. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy limiting participation in women’s sports “to student-athletes who were born female only.”

The Trump administration has since pressured institutions to further ban transgender women from participating in sports. In April, for example, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing transgender women to compete on women’s athletic teams — presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, in compliance with NCAA policy at the time.

Idaho and West Virginia

The court heard two cases on Tuesday, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ. The lawsuits, which focus on whether anti-trans participation laws violate the equal protection clauses of Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment, have been ongoing for years.

In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass a law outright banning transgender girls and women from participating in school sports that match their gender identity. Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman, was still able to participate in women’s club running and club soccer at Boise State University because she filed a lawsuit that same year and a district court blocked legal enforcement against her.

In 2024, she tried unsuccessfully to join the university’s women’s cross country and track and field teams and “she consistently ran slower than her female competitors of the same gender,” her attorney wrote. Her attorney emphasized that her “circulating testosterone levels are typical of cisgender women.”

Hecox’s lawyers objected to the Supreme Court taking up the case, previously writing that it was “about a four-year injunction barring the application of [the Idaho law] For one woman, this allowed her to take part in club running and club football. Then, in September 2025, her attorney argued the case had become moot, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and “promised not to try or participate in any school-sponsored girls’ sport covered by state law.”

Her attorneys wrote that “in the five years since this case began, Ms. Hecox has faced significant challenges that have impacted her personally and academically,” including illness and the death of her father. They said she has “received negative public scrutiny from some quarters as a result of this lawsuit, and she believes that this continued and potentially intensified attention during the upcoming school year will distract from her studies and prevent her from achieving her academic and personal goals.”

“While participating in women’s sports is important to Ms. Hecox, her first priority is graduating from college and living a healthy and safe life,” they wrote.

But attorneys defending Idaho’s law argued against dismissing the case, a position that could allow the high court to issue a nationwide ruling.

On Tuesday, Idaho Deputy Attorney General Alan M. Hurst argued the case was moot, saying Hecox’s plans about whether to play sports had changed before and could change again. Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged that, saying Hearst was asking the court to “force reluctant plaintiffs … to continue prosecuting the case.” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “It’s a little strange that the defendant doesn’t want the case dismissed.”

Hurst argued that Idaho’s law was not intended to exclude transgender people and said the state’s Legislature “wants to keep women’s sports as female-only.” He also said that testosterone does not reliably suppress performance.

“Sports are divided by gender because gender matters in sports,” Hurst said.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett asked Hurst whether he argued that separating 6-year-olds based on their biological sex should be allowed in sports. Hurst responded that even at that age, boys have a slight advantage, but co-ed sports might be an option.

The West Virginia case was filed in 2021 by the mother of Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a transgender sixth-grader. A judge blocks enforcement of the Mountain State’s law against the student.

“According to West Virginia, it passed [its law] The student’s attorneys wrote, “To ‘save women’s sports’ by preventing the coming wave of ‘bigger, faster, stronger men’ from stealing championships, scholarships, and opportunities from female athletes. In fact, West Virginia law happens to prohibit a sixth-grade transgender girl from participating on the school’s cross country and track teams with her friends.”

Her attorneys wrote that the sports she played were non-contact and that she “received puberty-delaying drugs and gender-affirming estrogens, allowing her to experience hormonal puberty unique to girls, with all the physiological musculoskeletal characteristics of cisgender girls without the testosterone-induced characteristics of cisgender boys.”

They wrote that she “wanted to play sports for the same reasons that most kids do: to have fun and make friends as part of a team.” She competed in the shot put and discus after the season, and “her performance was well within the range of cisgender girls her age,” they wrote.

Still, attorneys defending the West Virginia law wrote, “Male athletes who identify as female are increasingly competing in women’s sports, erasing the opportunities guaranteed by Title IX.” They wrote, “Women and girls lose their spots on athletic teams, give up spots on championship podiums, and are injured while competing against bigger, faster, stronger men.”

Michael R. Williams, West Virginia’s deputy attorney general, said the state’s law is “as indifferent to gender identity as sports are to gender identity,” and said “we don’t have real transgender exclusion.” He also argued that Title IX defines sex as biological sex because that was Congress’s understanding when it passed it.

Barrett suggested that if West Virginia publishes a study saying that the presence of women in calculus is holding back men, the state could use the state’s argument to argue for separate math classrooms. Gorsuch made a similar argument.

federal intervention

In both cases Tuesday, the federal government defended state laws. Hashim M. Mooppan, the chief deputy attorney general, said Title IX “provides that you can live apart on the basis of sex… Circulating testosterone levels are legally irrelevant under the provision.” He also said that transgender women are not “excluded from men’s teams.”

During and after oral arguments, hundreds of supporters and opponents of transgender athletes held dueling rallies right next to each other outside the Supreme Court, each with its own sound system and speakers. Education Minister Linda McMahon is among those supporting the state ban.

Photo by Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images

In his speech, McMahon praised the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group that defended the ban, and praised the Trump administration’s actions to “restore common sense by bringing gender back to sanity.” She also criticized the Biden administration’s rule declaring that Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, including discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A federal judge struck down these Title IX provisions in early 2025.

“In just four years, the Biden administration has reversed decades of progress, twisting the law to argue that ‘sex’ is not defined by objective biological reality but by subjective notions of ‘gender identity,'” she said. (Title IX regulations don’t take effect until August 2024, but federal courts have blocked them in dozens of states.)

McMahon added that while the Supreme Court deliberates, the government will continue to enforce Title IX “in keeping with its original intent and rooted in biological realities to ensure fair, safe, and equal access to educational programs for women and girls across the country.”

“As President Trump has made clear, America is in a golden age when female students and athletes have equal access to fair, safe competition and female-only private spaces free from divisive and discriminatory ideologies,” she said.