The United States Supreme Court has ruled that individual states may bar transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams, in a decision expected to reinforce similar laws across much of the country.
In cases known as West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the justices ruled unanimously on Tuesday that the two states’ laws did not breach Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in publicly funded education. They divided by six votes to three over whether West Virginia’s measure was constitutional.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said states could “maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females” and set eligibility according to biological sex. Neither the Constitution nor Title IX required an overhaul of women’s sport, he added.
The judgment upheld West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act, passed in 2021, and Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act of 2020, the first such state law in the country. It is expected to bolster comparable bans in more than 20 other states.
President Donald Trump welcomed the ruling as a “big win” and said it had ended a situation he considered ridiculous. Early in his second term in 2025, he signed an executive order barring federally funded education programmes from allowing transgender women and girls to compete on teams matching their gender identity.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, objected largely on technical grounds, arguing the majority had settled the constitutional question too quickly.
The ruling landed amid parallel debates in Europe over transgender participation in women’s sport. World Athletics, led by Sebastian Coe, has since 2023 barred transgender women who went through male puberty from the female category.
Tuesday’s decision closed a question that had divided US courts for years, clearing the way for states to reserve girls’ and women’s teams for those born female.
