WASHINGTON — In a landmark case, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld bans in Idaho and West Virginia that prohibited transgender athletes from playing on their public school and college sports teams.
The justices, in a 6-3 vote, decided that bans in Idaho and West Virginia can stand. Lower courts had ruled in favor of the transgender athletes who had challenged the laws, The Associated Press reported.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neal Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
The court held that schools can determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports teams based on biological sex. It unanimously agreed that barring transgender girls and women does not violate the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, stating the majority of justices had wrongly decided that transgender student athletes cannot bring constitutional challenges against the state bans.
Read the decision here and below.
Tuesday was the last day for cases to be decided on the Supreme Court’s docket for the 2025-26 term, The Washington Post reported.
Justices heard arguments in January on whether the bans in the two states violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, according to the newspaper.
In 2020, Idaho was the first of 27 states to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’s school sports, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. West Virginia followed suit the following year.
Lower courts previously blocked enforcement of those laws.
Lambda Legal, the ACLU and Legal Voice had filed two challenges, West Virginia v. BPJ and Little v. Hecox, on behalf of two transgender female athletes.
Lindsay Hecox, now 24, went to federal court in Idaho to challenge that state’s law. Hecox is a transgender woman who wanted the chance to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. While she did not make the rosters for those squads, she later played club sports.
The West Virginia case was filed by Heather Jackson, the mother of B.P.J. The 15-year-old transgender high school student has publicly identified as a girl since the third grade. She took puberty blockers and hormone therapy with estrogen, according to the ACLU. B.P.J. has competed on the track and cross-country teams at her school.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco agreed with Hecox that the law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, issued an order that prohibited West Virginia from enforcing its law, ruling that the law violated Title IX, which bars sex discrimination.
CNN identified B.P.J. as Becky Pepper-Jackson.
“Someone has to do this because this is just a terrible thing,” Pepper-Jackson told CNN in an interview with her family and attorneys before the oral arguments were heard in the case. “I know that I can handle it and it’s never crossed my mind to stop, because I know I’m doing it for everybody.”
Justices will begin the next session on the first Monday in October.
Check back for more on this developing story.
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