Supreme Court Rules on State Laws Excluding Men From Women’s Sports

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled, 6-3, in favor of a West Virginia law preventing men from competing in women’s sports.

“The question before the Court is: Under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, may schools maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females? In other words, may schools determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex? The answer is yes,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Kavanaugh’s opinion. Thomas and Gorsuch wrote concurring opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Jackson, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote another opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

The court’s decision applied to combined cases from Idaho and West Virginia. The cases of Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. will affect 25 states with laws preventing biological males from competing in women’s sports.

Trump signed an executive order in 2025 to withhold federal funds from states that allow biological males to compete in women’s sports.

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In 2020, Idaho lawmakers enacted the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, banning men and boys from competing in women’s and girls sports across all ages and levels of competition. 

Lindsay Hecox, a male athlete who identifies as female and who wanted to be on the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University, sued the state, and lower courts, including the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sided with the athlete. 

In the West Virginia case, a middle school student who claimed to identify as transgender wanted to play on the female sports teams at his school. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled West Virginia’s law violates Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and school athletics. 

Thomas’ Concurrence

“A man does not have a legal right to compete against women just because he believes he is a woman,” Thomas stated in his concurrence.

He wrote separately to focus on two points.

Thomas wrote that “transgender status is not a suspect class requiring heightened equal-protection scrutiny.” Those who are described as “transgender” are more accurately considered people with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex), Thomas wrote.

“Because ‘gender dysphoria’ is a mutable mental state that is the object of psychiatric treatment, it does not resemble the immutable characteristics on the basis of which our precedents have applied heightened scrutiny—race, sex, or national origin,” he added. “Instead, gender dysphoria resembles other characteristics on the basis of which legislatures may classify with a merely rational basis,” and “legislatures have many obvious rational bases to keep men who believe they are women out of teams and private spaces reserved for women.”

Second, Thomas insisted that “men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women and girls, even if they believe that they are.”

He noted that “sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic; it is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex.”

“To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’—is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens ‘as equal[s],’” he wrote, citing philosopher Josef Pieper.

Sotomayor’s Opinion

Sotomayor wrote that “an outstanding factual dispute should have prevented the court’s resolution” of B.P.J.’s case. She argued that the case should turn on whether athletes such as B.P.J. actually have an “athletic advantage,” as determined by the facts on a case-by-case basis.

“The ban is absolute, so B.P.J. cannot practice on girls’ teams, even if she would not take anyone’s spot in an eventual competition, even if everyone who tries out for the team makes it, and even if having the chance to participate could aid immensely in treating B.P.J.’s gender dysphoria.”

She wrote that the court’s majority was “moving the goalposts” to resolve “this important, divisive issue without knowing all the facts even though the validity of the means-ends fit depends on them.”

Sotomayor agreed, however, that West Virginia’s law did not violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Trump’s Response

Trump hailed the ruling as a “BIG WIN.”

“The United States Supreme Court just RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN’S SPORTS,” he posted on Truth Social. “Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!”

While the ruling does uphold laws preventing men from competing in women’s sports, it does not apply such laws in states where they have not passed. The ruling only upholds states’ ability to implement such laws, it does not impose them on other states.

This story is developing and may be updated.