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01/13 14:57 CST Supreme Court seems likely to uphold state bans on transgender
athletes in girls and women's sports
Supreme Court seems likely to uphold state bans on transgender athletes in
girls and women's sports
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) --- The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared ready to deal another
setback to transgender people and uphold state laws barring transgender girls
and women from playing on school athletic teams.
The court's conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against
transgender Americans in the past year, signaled during more than three hours
of arguments it would rule the state bans don't violate either the Constitution
or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in
education.
More than two dozen Republican-led states have adopted bans on female
transgender athletes. Lower courts had ruled for the transgender athletes who
challenged laws in Idaho and West Virginia.
The legal fight is playing out against the backdrop of a broad effort by
President Donald Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first
day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the
military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by transgender
people versus the need for fair competition for women and girls, the main
argument made by the states.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who coached his daughters in girls basketball, seemed
concerned about a ruling that might undo the effects of Title IX, which has
produced dramatic growth in girls and women's sports. Kavanaugh called Title IX
an "amazing" and "inspiring" success.
Some girls and women might lose a medal in a competition with transgender
athletes, which Kavanaugh called a harm "we can't sweep aside."
The three liberal justices seemed focused on trying to marshal a court majority
in support of a narrow ruling that would allow the individual transgender
athletes involved in the cases to prevail.
A ruling for West Virginia and Idaho would effectively apply to the other two
dozen Republican-led states with similar laws.
But the justices soon might be asked to decide about the laws in an additional
roughly two dozen states, led by Democrats, that allow transgender athletes to
compete on the teams that match their gender identity.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts by the Trump
administration and others seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that
have continued to allow them to compete.
The transgender athletes' cases
In the Idaho case, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over the state's first-in-the-nation
ban for the chance to try out for the women's track and cross-country teams at
Boise State University in Idaho. She didn't make either squad because "she was
too slow," her lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, told the court Tuesday, but she
competed in club-level soccer and running.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, was in the courtroom
Tuesday. 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. She is the only transgender person who
has sought to compete in girls sports in West Virginia.
Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in
middle school to a statewide third-place finish in the discus in just her first
year of high school.
Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion
Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and beach
volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer
stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Bird and
Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark
federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace,
finding that "sex plays an unmistakable role" in employers' decisions to punish
transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.
But last year, the six conservative justices declined to apply the same sort of
analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender
minors.
Chief Justice John Roberts signaled Tuesday he sees differences between the
2020 case, in which he supported the claims of discrimination, and the current
dispute.
The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argue there is
no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination to Title IX.
Idaho's law, state Solicitor General Alan Hurst, said, is "necessary for fair
competition because, where sports are concerned, men and women are obviously
not the same."
Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argue that such distinctions generally make sense,
but that their client has none of those advantages because of the unique
circumstances of her early transition. In Hecox's case, her lawyers want the
court to dismiss the case because she has forsworn trying to play on women's
teams.
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.
But despite the small numbers, the issue has taken on outsize importance.
Baker's NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender
women from women's sports after Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order
aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC
Center for Public Affairs Research 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, not the gender they identify with, while
about 2 in 10 were "strongly" or "somewhat" opposed and about one-quarter did
not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%,
identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the
UCLA School of Law.
A decision is expected by early summer.
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Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at
https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
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