Supreme Court Will Decide Transgender Women In Sports Bans

Topline

The Supreme Court announced Thursday it will take up multiple cases concerning state bans on transgender women in sports, teeing up a potential landmark ruling on transgender rights as the issue has become an increasing source of political controversy.

A transgender rights supporter rallies outside the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4, 2024 in … More Washington, DC.

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Key Facts

The court announced it will hear two cases next term involving state-level bans on transgender women in sports: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, which involve bans in West Virginia and Idaho, respectively.

Both cases ask the court to decide whether laws that restrict participation in women’s sports based on biological sex violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

West Virginia’s case also asks whether states can “consistently designat[e] girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on biological sex” under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools.

Officials in Idaho and West Virginia asked the high court to take up the cases after lower courts blocked the state laws as they applied to the transgender athletes who brought the lawsuits, allowing those specific plaintiffs to participate in women’s sports.

The Supreme Court did not offer any reasoning Thursday for its decision to take up the cases, or any note suggesting if any justices dissented from the decision, and the court did not take up a third case regarding Arizona’s ban on transgender women in sports.

Crucial Quote

“We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play,” Joshua Block, Senior Counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement Thursday about the court’s decision to take up the two cases. The ACLU is representing plaintiffs in the cases, along with Lambda Legal.

What To Watch For

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the transgender sports cases sometime during its next term, which begins in October. A ruling will then come out likely a few months after it hears arguments, sometime before the term ends in late June 2026. The case is expected to be one of multiple high-profile rulings on LGBTQ rights the court could issue next term, as justices have also announced they will hear a case on the legality of LGBTQ conversion therapy.

Big Number

27. That’s the number of states that have passed laws restricting participation in sports based on an athlete’s gender identity, as compiled by the pro-LGBTQ rights think tank Movement Advancement Project. In addition to Idaho and West Virginia, courts have also at least partially blocked laws in Arizona, Montana and Utah, which could be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Idaho and West Virginia cases.

Tangent

In addition to its decisions on the transgender sports cases, the Supreme Court also announced Thursday it will not hear what could have been a significant case over Montana’s law requiring notarized parental consent for minors to have abortions, after the Montana Supreme Court ruled it violated those minors’ rights to privacy. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, filed an opinion respecting the court’s decision not to take up the case, saying the way it was litigated in state court made it a “poor vehicle” to decide whether such parental consent laws are legal. The justices stressed that the decision to take up the case should not be read as “a rejection of [Montana’s] argument” in favor of parental consent laws on abortion, however, suggesting the court could still take up a different lawsuit over the issue in the future.

Key Background

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the cases comes as transgender women in sports has increasingly become a hot-button controversy in politics, with Republicans vehemently opposing transgender women participating on female sports teams because they believe they have an unfair advantage. Senate Democrats blocked a bill in Congress in March that would have banned transgender women in sports at the federal level, after the House passed its version of the bill in February. The issue has proved to be controversial even among Democrats, however, with two Democrats backing the House bill and California Gov. Gavin Newsom drawing criticism from his party for saying on his podcast in March that he believes it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender women to compete on female teams. The Supreme Court’s taking up of the transgender sports bans comes only weeks after the high court issued a major ruling on transgender rights in June, upholding state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors. The 6-3 decision ruled that such bans do not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of sex, because transgender minors could still get the same medical treatments if it’s for reasons other than “gender dysphoria.” The high court also previously ruled in favor of transgender rights in 2020, when it declared federal workplace anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees.