Supreme Court to review bans on trans athletes in female sports
The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will take up a pair of cases next term dealing with the contentious issue of transgender athletes competing in school sports.
Twenty-seven states have enacted such bans in recent years. Supporters say the laws are necessary to ensure fairness in competition because of the difference in physical capabilities of the sexes, but opponents say the laws are discriminatory and should be struck down.
Transgender rights have become a major cultural flash point, with President Donald Trump signing an executive order barring trans athletes from women’s sports, ordering transgender troops out of the military and seeking to halt nonbinary designations on passports.
The Supreme Court’s decision to review laws in Idaho and West Virginia that bar transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports will put the justices back at the center of such legal battles just months after they upheld state bans on gender transition care for minors.
In that 6-3 decision, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote separately to say that the court’s ruling left vulnerable other laws that restrict access for transgender individuals to the bathrooms and sports teams that match their gender identity. Barrett suggested in her concurring opinion that such laws are valid.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has also raised concerns about transgender athletes competing on women’s and girls’ teams. During oral argument in the gender transition case, known as U.S. v. Skrmetti, Kavanaugh asked whether halting the Tennessee ban on such treatment for minors would give transgender athletes the right to play on women’s and girls teams, “notwithstanding the competitive fairness and safety issues that have been vocally raised by some female athletes” in briefs filed in connection to the case.
The justices had listed the sports-related cases for discussion at their private conferences for months, but they did not say whether they would add the cases to their docket until Thursday. After their ruling in Skrmetti, state attorneys general urged the justices to quickly review the sports-ban laws.
West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey said the Supreme Court should reverse a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit blocking the state law in a case brought on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender teen who is a track athlete. The law defines sex as the “biological sex determined at birth” and bars males from competing in women’s sports at publicly funded schools.
“Girls deserve a safe, fair playing field today—not years from now—and the ruling’s present harm to women and girls is stark,” McCuskey wrote in his brief. “When biological males compete on women’s teams, female athletes lose championships, opportunities, and scholarships and suffer serious harms and safety risks.”
The Idaho case involves the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which banned transgender women and girls from sports at the elementary, secondary and college levels. The law creates a procedure to dispute the sex of someone competing as a female athlete. Athletes who are challenged must undergo a physical exam to verify their sex.
The law was challenged by Lindsay Hecox, a Boise State University student who wanted to compete on the track team. A federal court in Idaho found the law violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. That ruling was affirmed in part by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Multiple polls, including one by The Post and KFF, found that two-thirds of Americans agreed that trans girls should not be allowed to play girls’ sports. People who actually know a transgender person are more likely to say they think trans women should be allowed to compete.
Trans athletes remain very rare. A 2021 Associated Press analysis of 20 proposed bans found that legislators in most states couldn’t point to a single trans athlete in their own region. And in Florida, state records show that just two trans girls have played girls’ sports over the last decade.
In Utah, the governor noted in a 2022 press release that of the 75,000 students playing sports in Utah, just one was a transgender girl playing girls sports—a 12-year-old swimmer. In Mississippi, a 2023 statewide survey of superintendents revealed that no trans students were participating in sports.
For decades, big sports associations—including the NCAA, the Olympic Committee and the U.S. Soccer Federation—allowed trans athletes to compete, and most states did, too. Some required athletes to show proof they were taking hormones or puberty blockers, but a dozen states had no restrictions at all. As long as students could show their gender identity was consistent, they could play.
Trans people represent less than 1 percent of the country’s population, and for decades, state lawmakers rarely mentioned them. But as gay people won protections and the right to marry, LGTBQ+ rights groups and right-wing leaders began looking for new issues to galvanize supporters. Both turned their attention to trans rights.
Trans athletes almost never dominated. But between 2017 and 2019, two trans girls beat cisgender competitors at state track meets in Connecticut, and leading conservative Christian groups warned that other girls would lose athletic opportunities if trans girls continued to compete.
In February, the NCAA revised its participation policy for transgender athletes after Trump’s executive order. The collegiate sports organization now limits competition in women’s sports exclusively to athletes assigned female at birth. The rules apply to all athletes, including those who had undergone eligibility reviews under its previous policy.
Trump’s order directed the Education Department to tell schools they are violating Title IX—the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools—if they allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ or women’s sports. Under the law, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
The University of Pennsylvania announced this month that it will no longer allow transgender women to compete on its women’s sports team as part of an agreement reached with the Trump administration. The deal followed a government investigation into the school centered on a transgender athlete who competed on the school’s women’s swim team and became the first known transgender woman to win an NCAA Division I title.
Updated at 10:06 a.m. with rewrites throughout.
Casey Parks contributed to this report.
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