The U.S. Supreme Court appeared on Tuesday to be ready to uphold state laws that bar transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, a dispute centered on whether the bans violate the Constitution and federal education civil-rights law known as Title IX.
During more than three hours of arguments, the court’s conservative majority signaled it is likely to rule that the bans do not violate either the Constitution or Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education. The litigation has been closely watched because more than two dozen Republican-led states have adopted similar restrictions, and lower courts previously ruled for transgender athletes who challenged the laws in Idaho and West Virginia.
The question before the justices plays out as the Trump administration pursues policies affecting transgender Americans. The AP described the broader effort as beginning on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military, as well as a position that gender is immutable and determined at birth. In the courtroom discussion, the justices weighed the transgender athletes’ claims of sex discrimination against the states’ argument that their bans are needed for fair competition for women and girls.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who coached his daughters in girls basketball, signaled concern that a ruling could undo the effects of Title IX, which he described as an “amazing” and “inspiring” success. Kavanaugh also raised the possibility of a different kind of harm, saying some girls and women might lose a medal in a competition with transgender athletes, and describing the harm as “we can’t sweep aside.”
The AP reported that the three liberal justices seemed focused on assembling a court majority for a narrower approach that would allow the individual transgender athletes in the cases to prevail. A ruling for West Virginia and Idaho would, in effect, apply to other Republican-led states with similar laws, according to the AP’s description of the likely reach of the decision. The outcome also could affect separate legal efforts by the Trump administration and others aimed at barring transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
The cases challenging the state laws involved two athletes, one in Idaho and one in West Virginia. In Idaho, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over the state’s ban for the chance to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. Her lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, told the court that Hecox did not make either squad and that she was “too slow,” though Hecox continued to compete in club-level soccer and running.
In West Virginia, the AP reported that Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, was in the courtroom. The AP said she has been taking puberty-blocking medication, has publicly identified as a girl since age 8, and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing her as female. Pepper-Jackson has been described by the AP as the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls sports in West Virginia, and it said her results progressed from middle school cross-country to a statewide third-place finish in the discus in her first year of high school.
The dispute has drawn support from prominent athletes on both sides. The AP said tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona, and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state bans, while soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart support the transgender athletes.
The court’s questioning also referenced its prior decisions about discrimination and the scope of protections under federal civil-rights law. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, and the AP cited language from that decision that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate. Last year, the AP said, the six conservative justices declined to apply the same sort of analysis when the court upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, with Chief Justice John Roberts signaling he sees differences between the 2020 case and the current dispute.
The states defending the bans argued they do not need to extend the 2020 workplace-discrimination reasoning to Title IX. In Idaho, the AP said Solicitor General Alan Hurst argued that the state’s law is “necessary for fair competition because, where sports are concerned, men and women are obviously not the same.” The AP reported that Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers said such distinctions generally make sense but that their client has none due to the unique circumstances of her early transition, and in Hecox’s case, her lawyers asked the court to dismiss the suit because Hecox has forsworn trying to play on women’s teams.
Beyond the courts, the issue has been taken up by collegiate and Olympic sports governing bodies and framed in part around how many transgender athletes are involved. The AP said NCAA president Charlie Baker told Congress in 2024 that he was aware of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than a half-million students on college teams, even as the issue has attracted outsize attention. The AP also said the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
Public opinion has also been cited in the dispute. The AP-NORC poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth rather than the gender they identify with. The AP said about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed, while about one-quarter did not have an opinion. Separately, the AP said the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated that about 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the United States.
A decision in the Supreme Court cases is expected by early summer.