The US supreme court will consider state bans on transgender athletes on Tuesday in a major LGBTQ+ rights legal battle that could have far-reaching consequences beyond youth sports.
The court is hearing oral arguments in two cases brought by trans students who challenged Republican-backed laws in West Virginia and Idaho prohibiting trans girls from participating in girls’ athletic programs.
Those bans were both previously blocked by federal courts, but the states appealed to the supreme court, which is hearing a case on trans people’s access to sports for the first time. If the court’s conservative supermajority sides with the states and upholds the bans, the rulings could have significant ripple effects, paving the way for the enforcement of a range of anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
If the rulings are broad, civil rights advocates warn, the supreme court could make it easier for lawmakers and school officials to ban trans students’ access to appropriate bathrooms and facilities, restrict LGBTQ+ youth’s ability to use chosen names and pronouns, enforce strict dress codes, limit protections against anti-LGBTQ+ harassment, and further deny access to accurate identification documents.
“It’s really scary. The supreme court is poised to tell us whether dislike and moral disapproval of a specific group can be a real basis to make law,” said Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.
‘This isn’t just about me’
In Little v Hecox, Lindsay Hecox, a trans college student, challenged Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law categorically banning trans women and girls from women’s sports teams, which passed in 2020, blocking her from track at age 19. She has since sought to have the case dismissed, arguing she is no longer pursuing sports and doesn’t want to be subjected to ongoing harassment. But the court decided to hear the case, anyway.
In the second case, West Virginia v BPJ, 15-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson has challenged her state’s law banning her track participation, saying in a recent statement: “This case isn’t just about me, or even just about sports. It’s just one part of a plan to push transgender people like me out of public life entirely.”
In the last five years, 27 states have restricted trans children and teens’ access to school sports – most targeting trans girls, but some applying to all trans youth.
The anti-LGBTQ+ legal movement shifted its focus to trans athletes after the supreme court legalized marriage equality in 2015. Supporters of bans on trans athletes, including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the major Christian legal group defending the state laws this week, argue they are promoting fairness and safety in women’s sports.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates counter there is no credible evidence that inclusive sports policies have endangered cis girls and women, and the controversy is manufactured by anti-trans activists; one conservative group, for example, acknowledged in 2019 that its polling suggested people could be swayed to support Republicans with ads raising fears about trans girls in sports.
The GOP’s escalating campaign against trans youth athletes is directed at a minuscule fraction of the population. The National Collegiate Athletic Association president testified in 2024 he was aware of fewer than 10 trans college athletes, and Republican legislators have at times struggled to identify any trans girls playing sports in their states.
Meanwhile, states such as California have long allowed trans youth to play on teams that match their gender with little pushback – until the issue became subject to national debate.
While there are few out trans youth on sports teams at all levels, advocates note the bans have been devastating for those directly affected and LGBTQ+ youth who may be avoiding athletics due to the climate.
Potential outcomes
Lawyers for Hecox and Pepper-Jackson argue the bans violate the equal protection clause of the constitution, and in the West Virginia case, attorneys also argue the ban violates Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools.
One crucial question the court will consider is whether the laws are discriminatory against trans people and merit what’s known as “heightened scrutiny” – a more rigorous review, meaning the government has a higher burden to justify the bans. The court has never issued a ruling addressing whether it considers trans people a class that deserves this protection.
If the court were to use the sports cases to rule that laws targeting trans people do not warrant heightened scrutiny, then “any type of law discriminating against trans people is going to be presumptively constitutional”, said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the LGBTQ and HIV projects at the ACLU, which is representing both students.
“These laws were passed to establish a legal principle that transgender girls and women shouldn’t be treated like other girls and women, and then to use that principle as a jumping-off point for rolling back protections for transgender people more generally,” said Block, who is presenting oral arguments.
At least one prominent campaigner for trans sports bans has made this point explicitly, saying last year: “The gender ideology movement is a house of cards, and I believe it’s lying on that sports issue. This will be the card that makes all of it crumble.”
Scott Skinner-Thompson, a Colorado law school professor, said he feared the ruling could leave trans people with “minimal constitutional protections” from laws explicitly targeting them: “That would further embolden legislators to continue to pass laws that exclude transgender people from public life.”
In addition to bolstering laws banning trans people from bathrooms, that outcome could also make it even harder for incarcerated trans people to access critical healthcare and safe housing, said Skinner-Thompson, who signed an amicus brief arguing the bans should remain blocked.
“The broad question in these cases is: are we a society that’s interested in recognizing people’s common humanity, or are we more interested in excluding people for the purpose of a particular version of what counts as ‘fair’?”
The ruling could also establish that trans people are not protected under Title IX, which could be catastrophic, said Block. A school could deny admission to or expel a student on the basis of them being trans and it wouldn’t be considered a Title IX violation, he said.
In one particularly damaging outcome, which he hoped was unlikely, Block said the court could support the Trump administration’s assertions that Title IX requires that schools ban trans girls from sports. That would potentially invalidate policies in Democratic-run states that allow or mandate trans inclusion in youth athletics.
“West Virginia’s law is not discriminatory – it treats all students equally and represents a common-sense approach to a complex issue,” a spokesperson for the state’s attorney general said in an email. “It advances Title IX’s core mission to ensure that women and girls have access to athletic and academic opportunities that were long reserved for men.” The law, the spokesperson continued, “does not ban anyone from playing sports based on gender identity” and addresses “legitimate questions about competitive fairness and safety”.
A spokesperson for Idaho’s attorney general did not respond to an inquiry.
An ADF spokesperson said in an email: “Men and women are different, and those differences matter in sports. When you let males into women’s sports, it harms women … causing women to lose their dignity, privacy, and equal opportunities.” The spokesperson said the harm was “undeniable” and it was “vital to make sure our laws can acknowledge reality and protect women”.
‘The bans endanger all girls’
Advocates are not optimistic the court will block the sports bans, but hope the decision will be narrow. Last year, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. The ruling was a devastating blow for access to vital medical treatments, but was limited to healthcare and did not, as some had feared, establish a broader precedent supporting anti-trans legislation.
“BPJ is about a 15-year-old kid that the entire state of West Virginia has brought to the supreme court to continue to fight to exclude her from the track-and-field team,” said Karen Loewy, interim deputy legal director for litigation at Lambda Legal, a rights group also representing Pepper-Jackson. “The question before the court is narrow … and there are ways to answer that question narrowly.”
Shayna Medley, senior staff attorney at Advocates for Trans Equality, noted that sports bans have a record of harming both trans and cisgender girls. To enforce restrictions, some states allow invasive forms of sex testing, which invite community members to scrutinize individual girls if they have any suspicions about their identities.
“These bans endanger all girls by empowering adults, parents, politicians, coaches to investigate anyone who they suspect to be trans on the basis of how they look and subject them to invasive sex-testing procedures,” they said. “We’ve seen cis girls with short hair be accused of being trans and asked to turn over medical records. It really creates a climate of gender policing of anyone who doesn’t conform to stereotypes. These cases are part of a broader project to erode bodily autonomy principles that are supposed to be embedded in our constitution.”
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