Updated June 30, 2026 at 3:25 PM CDT
The Supreme Court once again leaped into the culture wars on Tuesday, ruling that states may ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has long coached his daughters’ and other girls’ basketball teams at school, wrote the court’s majority opinion.
“The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” he wrote, adding that transgender girls and women who want to play sports deserve “respect” and should not be “ostracized or vilified.”
The court’s decision follows last year’s ruling, which upheld state laws that make it illegal for doctors and other health professionals to provide gender-affirming care for minors. Since then, a total of 25 states have criminalized or banned gender-affirming care for minors. And in some states, bills have been introduced to ban gender-affirming care for adults, too.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, wrote the court’s decision “inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions.”
At the heart of Tuesday’s case is Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education programs that receive federal money. Enacted in 1972, the law has revolutionized women’s sports by requiring equal treatment for male and female athletes, including proportional scholarship funding and equal facilities.
But in recent years, 27 states have barred trans women and girls from participating in girls’ sports. The issue has become the newest flashpoint in both politics and law — especially after 2024 when the Trump presidential campaign aired attack ads on the subject more than 15,000 times, putting Democrats on the defensive.
Supporters of the ban on trans athletes say the laws are needed to prevent athletes whose assigned sex at birth was male from having an unfair advantage in women’s sports. Opponents of the transgender bans say they discriminate based on sex, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution’s guarantee to equal protection of the law. And for athletes at every level, the issue is deeply personal, with tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova on opposing sides, for example, along with hundreds of other high-profile athletes.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court tried to thread the needle, ruling that since Title IX explicitly allows sex-segregated athletic teams, states are free to limit team players to their sex at birth.
The two cases before the court were factually quite different. One involved Lindsey Hecox, a trans college student barred by Idaho law from trying out for the Boise State University varsity women’s track team. She challenged Idaho’s ban on trans athletes, contending it violated her right to equal protection of the law under the Constitution. Ultimately, after dropping out of school, she won her case in the lower courts, but upon returning in 2025, she decided not to play varsity sports.
Tuesday’s decision left lots of questions unresolved, however. Can states ban transgender kids from playing sports in grammar school, when boys and girls routinely play on the same teams? And when it comes to high school or college, what about club sports, and recreational leagues, as opposed to varsity sports?
The other case was brought by a West Virginia middle school student, barred by state law from competing in school sports. Assigned male at birth, Becky Pepper Jackson says she knew from a very young age that she was a girl, and by third grade she not only presented herself as a girl, she joined the girls running team in school. Though she loved the sport, she finished, dead last most of the time, and when she was in sixth grade, her coach pulled her aside to tell her she simply wasn’t good enough to make the middle school cross-country team. Instead, the coach suggested she should try another sport, like shot put or discus.
Becky took the advice and by eighth grade, after lots of practice in the off seasons, she started winning ribbons.
Tuesday’s decision is unlikely to be the last involving the rights of transgender minors, or for that matter, the rights of transgender adults. Last year the court’s conservative super-majority upheld a Tennessee law that bars medical professionals from providing gender affirming care for minors. Since then a total of 25 states have criminalized or banned such treatments for minors and several states have also restricted public funds from being used for transition-related care in adults. In addition, some states have moved to bar both private and public health insurance plans from covering gender-affirming procedures.
More broadly, three states—Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee—have banned transgender individuals from changing their sex on their birth certificates, and some states have restricted or completely barred any similar updating of gender markers on drivers’ licenses. At least 15 states now restrict transgender individuals from using public restrooms, including in government buildings and universities. And a relatively small number of conservative states have banned drag shows under public indecency or obscenity statutes.
Copyright 2026 NPR
