US Supreme Court appears poised to affirm trans athlete bans in Idaho, West Virginia
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, as justices heard two cases on state bans of trans athletes. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared likely Tuesday to keep in place laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning transgender athletes from participating on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
The outcomes from the nation’s highest court expected later this year could have sweeping implications for transgender rights more broadly as President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to roll back those rights have extended far beyond athletics.
In lengthy, back-to-back oral arguments, justices heard two cases — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. — which both deal with whether those states’ bans violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The West Virginia case also calls into question whether its prohibition on transgender athletes participating in women’s and girls’ sports violates the federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in education programs known as Title IX.
Rulings in lower courts have halted the two states from implementing the bans, to varying extents, leading GOP attorneys general in Idaho and West Virginia to ask the Supreme Court to step in.
Idaho and West Virginia represent just two of the nearly 30 states with laws banning transgender students’ participation in sports consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an independent think tank.
During oral arguments in the Idaho case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he sees the growth of women’s and girls’ sports as one of the country’s great successes over the past half-century.
He noted that some states, the federal government, the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee “think that allowing transgender women and girls to participate will undermine or reverse that amazing success and will create unfairness.”
He added that “for the individual girl who does not make the team, or doesn’t get on the stand for the medal, or doesn’t make all league, there’s a harm there, and I think we can’t sweep that aside.”
Kavanaugh is part of the court’s conservative wing, whose members outnumber liberals 6-3.
Title IX debated
Kavanaugh’s comment seemingly endorsed West Virginia Solicitor General Michael Williams’ framing of the issue, as a protection of women and girl athletes.
Williams told the justices that “maintaining separate boys’ and girls’ sports teams ensures that girls can safely and fairly compete in school sports.”
He argued that Title IX “permits sex-separated teams,” and “it does so because biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable.”
Joshua Block, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, argued on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender athlete at the forefront of the West Virginia case.
Block said that though West Virginia “argues that to protect these opportunities for cisgender girls, it has to deny them” to Pepper-Jackson, “Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause protect everyone, and if the evidence shows there are no relevant physiological differences between B.P.J. and other girls, then there’s no basis to exclude her.”
Idaho case
Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst, argued that “gender identity does not matter in sports, and that’s why Idaho’s law does not classify on the basis of gender identity.”
Hurst said the law “treats all males equally and all females equally, regardless of identity.”
Kathleen Hartnett, an attorney with Cooley LLP, represented Lindsay Hecox, a transgender student in Idaho who wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University but would have been barred from doing so under the Idaho law because she is transgender.
A federal court in Idaho halted the law from taking effect in 2020. A federal appeals court initially upheld the ruling in 2023 but adjusted the scope of it in 2024 to only apply to Hecox, not other athletes.
Hartnett said the law ignored that trans girls who take medication to block testosterone do not have an inherent physical advantage in sports.
“Circulating testosterone after puberty is the main determinant of sex-based biological advantage that (the Idaho law) sought to address,” she said.
Hecox “has mitigated that advantage because she has suppressed her testosterone for over a year and taken estrogen,” Hartnett said.
The Idaho law, Hartnett said, “thus fails heightened scrutiny as applied to Lindsay and transgender women like her who have no sex-based biological advantage as compared to birth sex females.”
Hecox has asked both an Idaho federal court and the Supreme Court to drop the case. Though a federal judge in Idaho rejected that attempt in October, the Supreme Court deferred the request until after oral arguments and could ultimately dismiss her case in the coming months.
Issue actively debated
Earlier landmark rulings involving transgender rights came up before the court Tuesday — including United States v. Skrmetti in 2025 and Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020.
In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s prohibition on gender-affirming care for minors.
The court held in Bostock v. Clayton County that LGBTQ+ employees are protected from employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Kavanaugh suggested the wide-ranging landscape of laws on the issue throughout the country meant the court should tread carefully in meddling in state laws.
“Given that half the states are allowing transgender girls and women to participate, about half are not, why would we at this point — just the role of this court — jump in and try to constitutionalize a rule for the whole country while there’s still, as you say, uncertainty and debate?” he asked Hartnett.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken steps at the federal level to prohibit trans athletes’ participation in women’s sports teams aligning with their gender identity, including the president signing an executive order in February 2025 that banned such participation.
He also signed executive orders regarding transgender people including orders that make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” restrict access to gender-affirming care for kids and aim to bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military.