The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can bar men who identify as women from competing in girls’ sports.
By Catholics for Catholics
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that States can impede males who identify as transgender female competitors from playing in girls’ sports, according to a Supreme Court landmark decision with foremost repercussions for more than half the nation, where such programs are in effect.
According to a story by Newsmax, in a 6-3 opinion, the high court concluded that neither Idaho nor West Virginia had transgressed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with their prohibitions, as well as that Title IX which prohibits sex discrimination in education and permitted states to split sports teams on the basis of biological sex.
So far more than two dozen other Republican- run states have taken up bans on alleged female transgender athletes, and the decision seems sure to expand to them as well.
Still, what remains up in the air by the outcome are lawsuits challenging state laws and regulations in Connecticut, California, and other places that allow transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity.
For example, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Bridgeport, West Virginia, has been getting puberty-blocking medication, has identified in public as a girl since age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate that recognizes Pepper-Jackson as female. He is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls’ sports in West Virginia.
🚨 BREAKING: The Supreme Court has UPHELD state laws BANNING men from women's sports
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 30, 2026
GREAT news for female athletes across the country!
EVERY state should join West Virginia and Idaho in passing these laws! pic.twitter.com/atJYlU5V7V
Pepper-Jackson has gone from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in middle school to statewide champion in the shot put in female competitions. He beat the second-place finisher by two feet in last month’s West Virginia championship meet.
Lindsay Hecox, in Idaho, sued over the state’s first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox didn’t make either squad because “she was too slow,” her lawyer, Kathleen Hartnett, told the court during arguments in January, but she competed in club-level soccer and running.
Famous women in sports have opinions on the matter from both sides. Tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona, and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.
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