Supreme Court to decide two transgender athletes cases

The Supreme Court is set to rule at the end of June or early July on Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ, two cases challenging state bans on transgender athletes in public school and college sports. At stake is how far the 14th Amendment’s equal protecti

When Pride Month nears its end, the Supreme Court is poised to hand down rulings that could reach far beyond the gym and into the everyday meaning of constitutional equality.

The court will decide two transgender athletes cases—Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ—set to test whether state bans on school sports participation based on sex assigned at birth violate the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The justices heard oral arguments in both cases in mid-January. and are expected to issue decisions at the end of June or early July.

The central question is straightforward in description but complicated in consequence: can states require students to participate in sports based on biological sex as assigned at birth, even when those rules collide with the equal protection clause?

In Little v. Hecox. the court is considering Idaho’s 2020 “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” The law barred transgender women and girls from playing on female sports teams in public schools and colleges. It also allowed any person to question a student athlete’s gender, triggering a medical verification process. The case stems from a lawsuit filed by a trans student who had undergone hormone therapy and wanted to join Boise State University’s cross-country team.

In West Virginia v. BPJ. the court faces a challenge to West Virginia’s 2021 “Save Women’s Sports Act.” That law required public schools and colleges to designate sports teams based on “biological sex” and prohibited students assigned male at birth from participating on women’s teams. The case is grounded in the experience of a trans girl who took puberty blockers for treatment of gender dysphoria at the onset of puberty and sought to continue participating on girls’ teams. The dispute asks the court to consider whether Title IX or the 14th Amendment bars a state from assigning students to sports teams based on their birth-assigned sexes.

Both cases, taken together, are about more than transgender athletes. They ask the justices to decide how strongly the 14th Amendment protects people from discrimination—and whether narrowing that protection in one context could weaken it elsewhere.

During oral argument in Little v. Hecox, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed the government’s reasoning. She questioned deputy solicitor general Hashim Mooppan. who represented the Department of Justice in support of the petitioners. about how many people the sports participation law would ultimately cover or exclude. Jackson’s concern was blunt: even if a law is constitutional for most people. what happens when it is unconstitutional as applied to a particular individual.

“I understand that you’re saying that if the law has such a broad sweep of constitutionality. then we’re not going to strike this thing down just because we can identify one person for whom it doesn’t apply. ” Jackson said. “But. if you are that one person and you can show that this is unconstitutional as applied to you. I guess I don’t understand why it matters that it’s constitutional as applied to 99.9 percent of the other people?”.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor raised a related point about how the Constitution should be measured against human impact rather than percentages. “Is it 1 percent, 5 percent, 30 percent, 15 percent? One is not enough for you, but why?” she asked. “The numbers don’t talk about the human beings.”

That insistence on the difference between abstract percentages and lived realities echoes across other cases already decided by the court over the past year.

Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled narrowly in favor of a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care in U.S. v. Skrmetti. Around the same period. the court allowed executive orders affecting transgender service members and travel to move forward pending litigation in U.S. v. Shilling and Trump v. Orr. In U.S. v. Shilling, the executive order banned transgender people from enlisting and serving in the military. In Trump v. Orr, another executive order required passports to display holders’ sex assigned at birth, also pending legal challenges.

Taken together. those outcomes shape the landscape for the two sports cases now in front of the justices—one reason advocates say the stakes feel unusually high. In the sports disputes. petitioners argue that bans on transgender athletes should be upheld to protect women from injury. promote competitive fairness. and preserve women and girls’ equal opportunity.

Opponents of the bans argue the opposite experience is already visible: they contend that rules framed as protecting fairness can also enable invasive body examinations and discrimination against cisgender women and girls. particularly those perceived as more masculine for reasons unrelated to sports eligibility.

The argument’s broader cultural echoes have shown up in examples mentioned during the proceedings and commentary around them. including the controversy over Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif’s eligibility in 2024. The piece also cites the spread of false. anti-Black claims that former First Lady Michelle Obama is “a man. ” as well as Candace Owens’ baseless conspiracy theory questioning French First Lady Brigitte Macron’s gender identity.

The deeper fight, though, is constitutional. The cases force the court to decide whether states can assign students into sports categories based on birth-assigned sex without violating the equal protection clause. The concern raised by critics is that if the court reads that clause more narrowly for transgender Americans—particularly trans youth—it could make it harder for other Americans to rely on the Constitution’s promise of equal protection.

The way the court is weighing classifications in similar contexts has already triggered comparisons. In U.S. v. Skrmetti. the justices considered whether Tennessee’s prohibition of access to hormone therapy and puberty blockers—depending on whether a young patient sought treatment to transition or for precocious puberty—amounted to a sex-based classification.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made an argument by analogy during oral argument in that case. stressing that if Tennessee’s distinction did not base access to treatment on sex in the way the state claimed. then classifications tied to race—such as the kind the court rejected in Loving v. Virginia—should also not be treated as valid.

Another ruling cited in connection with these constitutional questions is Trump v. Orr. In that decision. the majority opinion holds that the transgender respondents “failed to establish that the government’s choice to display biological sex ‘lack[s] any other purpose other than a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group. ” quoting language from the 2018 Trump v. Hawaii decision. That earlier decision had denied that the first Trump administration’s travel ban violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause by restricting refugees from majority-Muslim countries.

Critics say the same logic could widen beyond locker rooms.

They argue that a broader ruling in West Virginia v. BPJ about assigning public school activities based on sex could translate into more bathroom restrictions in public spaces. The point is illustrated through a recently viral video describing a father taking his daughters to the women’s restroom while police were called after another customer objected.

All of this is unfolding in a United States where constitutional fights over rights are sharpening after other landmark rulings. and where the broader political environment has been marked by heightened volatility. The piece frames these court battles as arriving in a post-Roe v. Wade era. and links the moment to economic uncertainty and a cultural climate where ultrapolarized politics and increased political violence have contributed to ultraconservative efforts to cut funding for public services like SNAP and Medicaid. Those efforts are contrasted with expanding funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement through the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

For transgender Americans—especially trans youth—restrictions on participation and treatment can narrow freedom slowly. sometimes in forms that seem limited at first. but that add up over time. For the rest of the country. the fear is that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of who receives the Constitution’s most protective promises will not stay neatly confined to one group or one setting.

The court will issue its decisions in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ at the end of June or early July, placing the justices’ answers to those constitutional questions at the center of what comes next as Pride Month draws to a close.

Supreme Court Little v. Hecox West Virginia v. BPJ transgender athletes Idaho Fairness in Women’s Sports Act West Virginia Save Women’s Sports Act 14th Amendment equal protection clause Pride Month Ketanji Brown Jackson Sonia Sotomayor Title IX U.S. v. Skrmetti Trump v. Orr U.S. v. Shilling passports military ban