Crucial Quote
“Sports are generally zero sum. Allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete—replacing her on the roster, knocking her out of the starting lineup, reducing her playing time, depriving her of a medal, and the like,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh—who himself coaches girls’ sports—wrote in his opinion for the court’s majority. At the same time, Kavanaugh wrote, transgender athletes’ “desire to compete” also “warrants respect,” and “no student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.”
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How Did Trump Respond?
President Donald Trump hailed the court’s ruling Tuesday, calling the decision a “BIG WIN” on Truth Social. “Wow! That takes that ridiculous situation off the table!!!” the president wrote.
Chief Critic
The cases over the sports bans “demand exercising judicial restraint, not rushing to answer conclusively difficult questions without sufficient evidentiary development,” Sotomayor wrote in her opinion both agreeing and dissenting with Tuesday’s ruling, which the other liberal justices joined. “In opting otherwise, the majority extends great sympathy to those it favors: the young cisgender girls and women who play sports.” While Sotomayor said she “share[s] that sympathy” for cisgender female athletes, she criticized her colleagues for protecting those athletes while inflicting “a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions.”
Which States Will The Court’s Ruling Impact?
Beyond Idaho and West Virginia, the court’s ruling is likely to impact laws in 25 states that similarly restrict transgender youth from competing in school sports. The other states with such laws in place are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. Alaska and Virginia have state regulations on transgender women in sports, but not full laws.
How Many Americans Are Impacted By These Laws?
It’s hard to say, but the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute estimated last year probably around 122,000 transgender youth participate in high school sports, based on an estimated 300,000 transgender Americans ages 13-17, and surveys show about 40% of transgender high schoolers play a sport. That estimate would include both transgender boys and girls, however—while the state laws primarily target transgender girls—and would include students in states without laws restricting their participation. The Williams Institute pegs the number of trans college athletes as making up no more than 1.3% of the overall college athlete population.
Key Background
The court’s ruling is the latest in a string of major opinions it’s come out with in recent years on transgender and LGBTQ rights. Justices ruled last year to uphold state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors, as well as let parents opt their children out of LGBTQ book assignments in schools. Earlier this term, the court also allowed the Trump administration to move forward with blocking transgender Americans from having a sex marker on their passport reflecting their gender identity. The court did issue a major ruling in favor of transgender rights in 2020, when it declared federal workplace anti-discrimination laws protect gay and transgender employees. Transgender sports bans have become a major national issue in recent years, with even some Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom expressing some level of support for restrictions. In addition to bans at the state level, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February 2025 that threatens to take federal funding away from schools that allow transgender women to compete in female sports. The House also passed a bill in February that would restrict transgender women’s participation in sports nationwide, though it later died in the Senate.
Further Reading
Supreme Court Suggests It Will Uphold Restrictions On Transgender Women In Sports (Forbes)
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