Supreme Court Upholds State Bans on Transgender Athletes in Girls' Sports

The Court decided Little v. Hecox alongside West Virginia v. B.P.J., two challenges brought by transgender student athletes who argued that categorical exclusion from girls' teams denied them equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Idaho's 2020 Fairness in Women's Sports Act was the first such measure in the country and had been blocked by lower courts for years before the justices agreed to hear the state's appeal.

Writing for a divided Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh concluded that schools may determine athletic eligibility according to biological sex without running afoul of equal protection guarantees. The majority reasoned that preserving competitive categories for female athletes is a legitimate state interest, extending the deferential posture the Court had signaled a year earlier in the gender-affirming care context.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warning that the decision leaves transgender youth without a federal shield against blanket exclusion from school activities. Civil rights groups that had represented the athletes said the ruling would ripple through the many states with comparable laws already on the books.

The decision does not compel any state to adopt a ban; it removes the constitutional obstacle that had kept several such laws from taking effect. Advocacy organizations signaled that future fights would shift to individual state legislatures and to statutory claims under Title IX.