The US Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws barring transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s school sports, delivering a major victory to conservatives in one of the country’s most fiercely contested culture-war battles.
The decision allows Idaho, West Virginia and more than two dozen other Republican-led states to enforce measures requiring students to compete in public school and college teams according to their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity.
The ruling is the latest sign of the conservative-dominated court’s willingness to side with states on the issue, following last year’s decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
The cases before the court were brought by transgender students who argued that the bans violated the US Constitution’s equal protection guarantee and Title IX, the federal civil rights law barring sex discrimination in education.
Supporters of the laws say they are needed to preserve fair competition and protect athletic opportunities for girls and women.
Opponents say they single out a tiny number of vulnerable students for exclusion and discrimination, turning children’s participation in school sports into a national political battleground.
The Idaho case arose from the state’s 2020 Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which was challenged by a transgender athlete at an Idaho university. Lower courts found the law unconstitutional.
Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst told the justices during arguments in January that “sex is what matters in sports,” citing differences in size, strength, muscle mass and lung capacity.
The West Virginia case involved a teenage transgender girl who was barred under a 2021 state law from running on her middle school girls’ track team.
Her lawyers argued that transgender girls who receive testosterone-suppressing treatment do not retain an unfair athletic advantage and that the laws are broad bans driven more by politics than evidence.
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