Topline
The Supreme Court announced Thursday it will take up multiple cases concerning state bans on transgender women in sports, teeing up a potential landmark ruling on transgender rights as the issue has become an increasing source of political controversy.
A transgender rights supporter rallies outside the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4, 2024 in ... More
The court announced it will hear two cases next term involving state-level bans on transgender women in sports: West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, which involve bans in West Virginia and Idaho, respectively.
Both cases ask the court to decide whether laws that restrict participation in women’s sports based on biological sex violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
West Virginia’s case also asks whether states can “consistently designat[e] girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on biological sex” under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools.
Officials in Idaho and West Virginia asked the high court to take up the cases after lower courts blocked the state laws as they applied to the transgender athletes who brought the lawsuits, allowing those specific plaintiffs to participate in women’s sports.
The Supreme Court did not offer any reasoning Thursday for its decision to take up the cases, or any note suggesting if any justices dissented from the decision, and the court did not take up a third case regarding Arizona’s ban on transgender women in sports.
“We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play,” Joshua Block, Senior Counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement Thursday about the court’s decision to take up the two cases. The ACLU is representing plaintiffs in the cases, along with Lambda Legal.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the transgender sports cases sometime during its next term, which begins in October. A ruling will then come out likely a few months after it hears arguments, sometime before the term ends in late June 2026. The case is expected to be one of multiple high-profile rulings on LGBTQ rights the court could issue next term, as justices have also announced they will hear a case on the legality of LGBTQ conversion therapy.
This story is breaking and will be updated.