US Supreme Court upholds Idaho and West Virginia trans sports bans

The US Supreme Court upheld Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender girls and women from female school sports teams. The ruling strengthens similar state bans while leaving other disputes over transgender participation unresolved.

In Short

• The judgment says such restrictions do not breach Title IX protections
• More than two dozen Republican-led states may see similar laws reinforced
• Separate disputes in Connecticut and California remain unsettled after this ruling

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that bar transgender girls and women from playing on school sports teams for females. The ruling says the bans do not violate the Constitution or the federal law Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.

The decision is expected to affect similar laws in more than two dozen Republican-led states. However, it leaves unresolved separate legal challenges to laws and rules in places such as Connecticut and California that allow transgender athletes to compete in line with their gender identity.

The court's conservative majority has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans over the past year. In 2020, the Supreme Court had ruled that LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace, finding that "sex plays an unmistakable role" in employers' decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behaviour they otherwise tolerate. But last year, the court's six conservative justices declined to apply similar reasoning when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

In West Virginia, the case centred on Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Bridgeport. She has been taking puberty-blocking medication, has publicly identified as a girl since the age of 8, and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognising her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls' sports in the state. Pepper-Jackson moved from being a back-of-the-pack middle-school cross-country runner to becoming the statewide shot put champion, winning last month's West Virginia championship by two feet.

In Idaho, Lindsay Hecox challenged the state's first-in-the-nation ban in the hope of trying out for the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. She did not make either squad because "she was too slow," her lawyer Kathleen Hartnett told the court during arguments in January, though she competed in club-level football and running. Her lawyers had asked the court to dismiss the case because she had given up plans to try to play on women's teams.

States backing the bans argued there was no reason to extend the workplace discrimination ruling to Title IX. Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst told the court that the state's law is "necessary for fair competition because, where sports are concerned, men and women are obviously not the same." Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argued that such distinctions may generally make sense, but said their client does not have those advantages because of the specific circumstances of her early transition.

The issue has also drawn strong views from sportspersons. Tennis great Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona, and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings supported the state bans. Football stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn, and basketball players Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart backed the transgender athletes.

NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress in 2024 that he knew of only 10 transgender athletes among more than half a million students on college teams. Even so, the issue has taken on major political and legal significance. Baker's NCAA and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees barred transgender women from women's sports after President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at stopping their participation.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about six in 10 US adults strongly or somewhat supported requiring transgender children and teenagers to compete only on teams matching the sex assigned to them at birth. About two in 10 were strongly or somewhat opposed, while about one-quarter had no opinion. According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 2.1 million adults, or 0.8 per cent, and 724,000 people aged 13 to 17, or 3.3 per cent, identify as transgender in the US.

The ruling upholds the Idaho and West Virginia bans and is likely to influence similar laws across the US, while leaving intact separate disputes over rules that allow transgender athletes to compete in line with their gender identity.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends