The Supreme Court Just Ruled to Uphold State Restrictions on Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports
by Maya Davila
On Tuesday, June 30th, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Idaho and West Virginia’s bans on transgender athletes playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, the decision landing a major victory for Republican-led states in their campaign to restrict transgender students’ participation in school sports.
In a 6-3 decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that the states’ laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX. The issue came to the high court in a pair of cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., centered on 2 transgender students: Lindsay Hecox, who sought to run track and cross country at Boise State University, and Becky-Pepper Jackson from West Virginia, who sued her state for the right to stay on her schools’ girls team and won, first in district court and then on appeal. The Supreme Court just overturned that win.
For years, conservative lawmakers have aggressively pushed back against transgender girls’ participation in sports; this ruling is the latest in a string of losses for trans Americans. The Supreme Court has already allowed bans on trans individuals serving in the military, upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for minors, and allowed the Trump administration to require passports to list sex at birth instead of gender identity. This is not simply about keeping trans people out of sports; this is part of a larger conversation on whether transgender people can be carved out of public life by our government.
The Trevor Project, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, condemned the ruling, saying it would compound the harm transgender and nonbinary young people already feel from anti-LGBTQ+ laws and political debates. Jaymes Black, the CEO, said, “The continued attacks on transgender young people in this country must stop. Today’s news has nothing to do with safety or fairness in sports; these rulings only serve to send a message to transgender and nonbinary young people that says, ‘you don’t belong.’ But these young people do belong. And they deserve the same opportunities as their peers, including participating in school sports.”
The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that there are 300,100 youth in the United States, aged 13 to 17, who identify as transgender, and 398,900 aged 18-24 who identify as transgender. At the college level, trans athletes only make up 1.3% of athletes nationwide. Despite the small numbers, the issue has taken on an outsized importance.
Today’s ruling continues the attack on LGBTQ+ people in our country, and is unlikely to be the last involving the rights of transgender minors and adults alike.
