The U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws that restrict transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams, ruling in a 6-3 decision that their exclusion is not a violation of the Constitution. The decision lets stand a wave of bans that states across the country have adopted in recent years.
The ruling came on the final day of the court's term and was described as a significant win for President Trump. It landed the same day the justices handed the president a major loss on another front, rejecting his effort to end birthright citizenship, underscoring how the closing decisions cut in different directions on the administration's priorities.
The case brought together two consolidated disputes, one centered on the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause and the other on Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education programs receiving federal funding. The challengers had argued that excluding transgender athletes amounted to unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex.
By a 6-3 margin, the court rejected that argument, concluding that the bans do not run afoul of the Constitution. The outcome effectively affirms that states may set these restrictions, treating the question as a matter of state prerogative rather than a federal violation, and clears the way for the prohibitions to be enforced.
Among the laws at issue were measures such as Idaho's Fairness in Women's Sports Act, enacted in 2020, and a similar statute in West Virginia, both of which limited transgender girls and women from joining female athletic teams in public schools. Roughly half of U.S. states had embraced comparable bans, making the ruling sweeping in its practical reach.
The decision is expected to affect an estimated 122,000 transgender American teenagers who take part in high school sports, a group that represents just over one percent of the more than eight million teenage student athletes nationwide. Supporters of the bans framed the outcome as protecting fairness in women's sports, while opponents warned it would shut transgender youth out of school athletics.
Together with the birthright citizenship decision, the transgender sports ruling capped a closely watched final stretch of the term, in which the justices weighed several high-profile questions touching on individual rights and the limits of government authority. The competing outcomes are likely to fuel continued political and legal debate well beyond the court's summer recess.