Supreme Court Appears Likely to Uphold Trans Athlete Bans: Analysis

Twenty-seven states have passed laws banning transgender youth from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity. And while these bans may vary in scope, each one relies on the same spurious claim that trans athletes pose a uniquely dire “threat” to women’s sports. 

Those claims were on full display on Jan. 13, 2026, as the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in two cases challenging laws in West Virginia and Idaho that categorically ban transgender women and girls from playing in athletic programs alongside other women and girls.

Both cases together ask whether such bans violate federal and constitutional law. After nearly four hours of arguments in the two cases, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court appear ready to rule that they do not.

Little v. Hecox

The first case heard on Jan. 13 was Little v. Hecox, a case brought by Lindsay Hecox, a transgender athlete who was banned under a 2020 Idaho law from trying out for and competing on the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. 

The law categorically bars transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports at all ages and levels of competition. It also requires invasive testing—for example, a health-care provider examining a student’s reproductive anatomy—if an athlete’s sex is questioned.

Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have blocked the Idaho law. Despite winning in the lower courts, Hecox asked the Supreme Court in September to dismiss her case as moot and moved to voluntarily dismiss her case in the lower court, citing concerns over the intense public scrutiny surrounding the litigation. Hecox also pledged to not participate in women’s sports while in Idaho.

West Virginia v. B.P.J.

The justices also heard arguments in West Virginia v. B.P.J., a case that challenges West Virginia’s categorical ban on allowing transgender girls to participate in girls and women’s sports from middle school through college.

Imani Gandy and I covered the case on Boom! Lawyered, but here’s a quick overview. Becky Pepper-Jackson is a transgender student who wanted to be a part of her middle school’s track team but was prohibited. Pepper-Jackson, who is now in high school, challenged West Virginia’s 2021 anti-trans athletes Save Women’s Sports Act, arguing it violated Title IX of the Civil Rights Act (that’s the federal law that bans sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding), as well as the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

West Virginia’s law was blocked in 2024, when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that it does violate Title IX. West Virginia’s Republican Attorney General appealed Pepper-Jackson’s win with the Supreme Court.

Calcifying rigid gender norms

A ruling is not expected on these cases until June, when the Court typically releases its highest-profile opinions. But I’m not optimistic that the decisions, whenever they are released, will support the trans students who brought them. The Court’s conservative majority made its hostility to transgender minors apparent last June when it upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming health care in United States v. Skrmetti.

The risk in these sports-related cases goes beyond the very real and damaging harm that the students at the center of them—and other trans athletes—have faced and will continue to face. Conservative advocates are using arguments against trans participation in sports to calcify the right’s damaging, essentialist gender norms into law. 

That’s likely why Chief Justice John Roberts, alongside Justice Sam Alito, pressed lawyer Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the organization representing the minor Pepper-Jackson, to create a rigid definition of sex as under Title IX based solely—or at least predominately—on biological sex at birth. 

Roberts insinuated that the ACLU wanted to define sex discrimination as “whatever characteristic you think should be included in the definition of sex.” 

“I’m not sure you have that kind of flexibility,” added Roberts, who I suspect may write the majority opinion endorsing these kinds of bans.

“The question then would be instead,” he continued, “What does Congress think the words mean?”

Block smartly did not take the bait. He pointed out that comparable federal statutes like— Title IV, which bans race discrimination—do not define race but still set out to remedy racial discrimination. And so, Block argued, the Court does not need to define sex for Title IX to tackle sex discrimination. 

It was one of the sharpest exchanges of the day. 

As we saw in Skrmetti, the conservative legal movement wants to enshrine into law a specific and deeply conservative belief that biological sex fundamentally defines not just personal identity, but a constitutional one as well where the state decides who is or is not a woman—and legislates their access to opportunities accordingly. 

It’s clear to me that the only strategy progressive legal advocates can take before the Roberts Court at this point is a strategy of harm mitigation. Grind the gears of justice as slowly as possible. Work towards narrow decisions that effectively leave big questions like whether trans athlete sports bans are sex discrimination unanswered for another term. The conservative, ideological capture of the Court leaves them no real alternative.

Quite frankly, that’s the best advocates representing the trans students in these cases can accomplish given the current ideological makeup of the Court.

This story is a condensed and updated version of an article originally published on Dec. 12, 2025.

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