Supreme Court Upholds State Bans on Trans Girls in Female Sports, 6-3.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 30, 2026, that states may bar transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. The conservative majority upheld bans in Idaho and West Virginia, reversing two lower courts that had found the laws discriminate against transgender students, CNN reported. Similar bans in more than two dozen states are now likely to stand.

If you are a trans young person and this news is hard, you are not alone. The Trevor Project is free and available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678-678. Trans Lifeline is staffed by trans people at 877-565-8860.

What the Court Decided

The justices decided two consolidated cases, Little v. Hecox from Idaho and West Virginia v. B.P.J. Both states had passed laws limiting girls’ and women’s school sports to students assigned female at birth.

Two lower courts had sided with the transgender students. The Ninth Circuit found Idaho’s law violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The Fourth Circuit found West Virginia’s law violated Title IX, the federal ban on sex discrimination in schools.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority reversed both. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion, holding that states may set eligibility for girls’ and women’s sports “based on biological sex,” consistent with both Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read part of her dissent from the bench, a rare move, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. She wrote that the majority “extends great sympathy” to the cisgender girls it favors while inflicting “a hardship on those it disfavors,” deciding the question against trans students without giving them a full chance to make their case.

Who the Cases Were About

The plaintiffs were not a movement. They were two students.

Lindsay Hecox is a college runner in Idaho who sued after the state barred her from the women’s track and cross-country teams. Becky Pepper-Jackson, identified in court as B.P.J., had run on her West Virginia school’s girls’ cross-country and track teams for years before the state moved to remove her. Both wanted to keep competing with their classmates.

What It Means Now

The ruling reaches far beyond two students. More than two dozen states have passed laws like Idaho’s and West Virginia’s, and this decision means those bans can stand. The constitutional and Title IX arguments that had won in lower courts are now closed off for transgender students in sports.

The decision narrows what Title IX protects. A law written in 1972 to open school sports to girls has now been read to permit excluding one group of them.

The Bigger Picture

Transgender students are a tiny fraction of the millions of children who play school sports. The bans were not a response to a competitive crisis. They are one front in a coordinated, funded campaign to roll back transgender rights through legislatures and courts, alongside fights over healthcare, bathrooms, and identity documents.

The cost falls hardest on kids who are already vulnerable. Transgender youth face far higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts than their peers, and research links acceptance and inclusion to lower risk. A ruling that tells trans students their state can shut them out cuts the other way.

What You Can Do Now

Use the letter below to ask your members of Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would write protection from discrimination based on gender identity into civil rights law, including in schools. The court read Title IX not to cover these students. Congress can change that.
Fight the bans at the state level. More than 20 states still have no such ban. Tell your state lawmakers to keep it that way, and tell them not to model new bills on Idaho’s or West Virginia’s.
Support the organizations defending trans youth. The ACLU and Lambda Legal litigated these cases, and the Trevor Project supports trans young people in crisis. Donating, volunteering, and showing up matter most right after a loss like this.

Update, July 7, 2026: The Supreme Court issued its ruling in West Virginia et al v BPJ, upholding state laws that bar transgender girls and women from competing in female sports categories. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, finding the laws consistent with Title IX and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision was 6-3.

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurrence arguing that sex is binary and immutable, and that transgender women are not women “even if they believe that they are.” The ruling validates Trump’s February 2025 executive order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which conditions federal education funding on schools’ compliance with female-sports restrictions.

Before the court were challenges to West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act and Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act specifically. Twenty-seven states had already enacted similar bans before the justices took up the case, according to The Guardian.

Update, July 9, 2026: Harry Barbee, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published a commentary in the Washington Blade arguing the June 30 ruling functions as a long-term public health decision rather than a narrowly scoped sports regulation. Barbee’s research on LGBTQ adults in their 60s, 70s, and 80s links chronic legal stigma to elevated rates of depression and to early markers of cognitive decline in aging populations.

The 6-3 opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, framed the West Virginia ban as a distinction by “biological sex” rather than transgender status, the same approach the Court used in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the 2025 gender-affirming care case. That framing left unresolved whether laws singling out transgender people require heightened judicial scrutiny, a question Barbee and legal advocates say now bears directly on health care access, employment, and identification documents.

Advocacy groups noted the ruling also reread Title IX through a strict “biological sex” standard, which they say places school-based federal protections against discrimination in hiring and student services at new legal risk. More than two dozen states have enacted sports bans the ruling now validates, and remaining legal challenges shift to statehouses and school boards.