The US Supreme Court upholds bans on transgender women in women’s schools and college sports

The US Supreme Court has ruled that states can bar transgender women from competing in sports at women’s schools and colleges.

The court heard the cases of students in two different states who had challenged the ban on participation. Two states, Idaho and West Virginia, passed laws that required public school and college sports teams to compete according to their gender recorded at birth.

One of the two challenges said the ban violated equal rights protections in the US Constitution. Another said it is against human rights laws.

More than a dozen states have implemented bans since Idaho did so in 2020.

Under that state ban, a transgender woman — a natural male who identifies as a woman — is not allowed to compete in women’s sports at schools and colleges.

All nine of the court’s judges ruled that the state ban did not violate Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools.

But the justices differed on whether the ban violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Six justices said it did not violate the constitution, but three liberal justices disagreed.

“The Constitution and Title IX do not require changes to the way women and girls play across America,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the ruling.

In her partial dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority opinion applied “a narrow conception of equal protection” to sports.

The challenge launched in Idaho came from a transgender woman, Lindsay Hecox, a long-distance runner, who filed shortly after the law was passed. It was later granted by the district court and the court of appeals.

State attorney Barbara Ehardt, who introduced this law, said when it was passed that she would ensure that “boys and men will not be able to take the place of girls and women in sports because it is wrong”.

But in an appeals decision, a three-judge panel found that Idaho’s law violated constitutional rights. They said the state had failed to provide evidence that its ban protected “sexual equality and opportunity for female athletes”.

West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said the decision is a victory for common sense and will give all states “clarity and certainty to ensure justice and safety for female athletes today and for generations to come”.

But the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which represents the LGBT community, has criticized the decision.

“This decision is very sad for transgender student-athletes who are forced to sit on the sidelines simply because of who they are,” said HRC President Kelley Robinson.

President Donald Trump, who celebrated the decision and called it a “BIG WIN” on social media, has made the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports a major focus of his 2024 re-election campaign. Last year, he signed an executive order aimed at barring transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams at schools and colleges.

After that decision, the NCAA, the governing body of US college sports, banned transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Supporters of the ban argued that transgender women had a biological advantage over athletes who were classified as female at birth.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in March that it would reduce the women’s division of the Olympic games to biological women, it said that its working group had reviewed the latest scientific evidence over the past 18 months and concluded that there was “a clear consensus”., outside that “the male gender gives a performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power and resistance” .

Those against the ban argued that it unfairly discriminated against transgender students and debated whether there is scientific consensus that transgender women and girls have an inherent advantage.