Supreme Court Takes Up Transgender Sports Bans This Week In Landmark Cases
The justices will hear arguments Tuesday in cases that could decide whether states can bar transgender girls from competing in school sports.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in two closely watched cases that place transgender girls’ participation in school sports before the justices for the first time. The outcome could determine the future of similar bans in 27 states and reshape how U.S. law treats transgender people far beyond athletics.
The cases come from West Virginia and Idaho, where federal courts blocked Republican-backed laws that bar transgender girls from competing on girls’ teams. Lower courts found the bans likely violate Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating “on the basis of sex.” The states are now asking the Supreme Court to reverse those rulings.
At the center of the West Virginia case is Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old track and field athlete who throws shot put and discus. She is the only known openly transgender student athlete in the state. Becky challenged the law in 2021 after it threatened to remove her from the team she competes on with friends.
“Someone has to do it. Someone has to do this for all of us,” Becky told ABC News. “Otherwise these laws and bills are just going to stand.”
Becky transitioned in third grade and, with the help of puberty blockers, has not undergone male puberty. Her mother, Heather Jackson, disputes claims that Becky has any athletic advantage.
“She has testosterone from her adrenal glands just like every female out there, but that’s the only testosterone she has,” Heather Jackson said. “She’s actually not the biggest person on her team. There’s people taller than her; there’s people shorter than her. She’s just an average female teenager.”
West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey argues the state has a constitutional right to separate sports by sex assigned at birth, calling individualized testing unworkable.
“It really comes down to one simple question,” McCuskey said. “Is it legal and constitutional for states to delineate their athletic playing fields based on the immutable physical characteristics that people have that are associated with their sex that’s assigned at birth?”
The second case involves Idaho’s 2020 ban, challenged by college student Lindsay Hecox. Although Hecox later sought to withdraw her lawsuit to avoid further scrutiny, Idaho pressed to keep the case alive. The Court will decide later whether it should be dismissed.
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Advocates warn the stakes extend well beyond sports. A broad ruling upholding the bans could weaken protections for transgender people in schools, housing, health care, and public life.
“It’s really scary. The Supreme Court is poised to tell us whether dislike and moral disapproval of a specific group can be a real basis to make law,” Cathryn Oakley of the Human Rights Campaign told The Guardian.
Public opinion currently favors restrictions. A June 2025 Gallup survey found 69 percent of Americans believe transgender girls should only play on boys’ teams. The Trump administration has reinforced that view through an executive order threatening to pull federal funding from schools that allow transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports.
The court’s decision will signal whether trans students are protected under existing civil rights law, or whether states are free to exclude them from full participation in school life.
