The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that individual states are free to bar transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports, in a major decision on one of the most contentious social issues in American life. The court found that such bans are permissible under the Constitution and under federal law, handing states the authority to set their own rules on the question.
The ruling means that, where states choose to do so, they may prevent transgender athletes from taking part in female sports categories, and the justices indicated that this is a matter the states are entitled to decide for themselves. The decision lands in the middle of a debate that has divided communities, lawmakers and the wider public across the country for several years.
During the case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh addressed the reasons a state might wish to maintain separate male and female sports, touching on differences between competitors and on safety considerations. His remarks reflected the way the court approached the dispute, treating it primarily as a question about the organisation of sport rather than a sweeping pronouncement on rights in general.
Indeed, the justices kept the scope of the ruling narrow. According to the analysis of the decision, it is very much focused on sport and does not resolve the broader set of questions surrounding transgender rights, such as how a person's status should be treated on a passport or in relation to military service. Those wider matters were left untouched.
The court also declined to settle the deeper constitutional question of how transgender people should be treated under anti-discrimination law. It did not decide whether claims of discrimination on this basis should be subject to the kind of heightened scrutiny applied to racial discrimination, for example, signalling that it was reserving those larger issues for a future case.
The approach mirrors the way the court handled its last major case involving transgender rights, when, a year earlier, it left it to individual states to decide whether to ban puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors. Taken together, the rulings point to a pattern of the court allowing states wide latitude on these questions, even as it stops short of resolving the broader legal status of transgender Americans.