The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can bar transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.
The ruling is seen as a victory for advocates who argued that girls’ sports should only include biological females, preventing biological males from competing.
In the high court’s ruling, the majority said that historically, Title IX was passed to allow women an equal opportunity to compete in sports, and that must be preserved. Title IX protects against sex discrimination in education.
“The question is whether Title IX permits schools to maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. The answer is yes,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
“Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Title IX’s implementing regulations expressly permit schools to maintain separate teams for ‘members of each sex,’” he wrote.
Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, was joined by the court’s other GOP-appointees.
The court’s three Democratic appointees agreed with part of the ruling but disagreed with other aspects.
In a dissent authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the other two Democratic appointees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — joined, she argued the lower courts should have better sorted out facts related to challenging whether state laws that bar transgender athletes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which requires states to treat individuals equally.
In other words, she believed lower courts should have done more fact-finding before the justices issued a ruling one way or the other.
“The majority’s analysis looks nothing like the judicial check necessary,” she wrote.
The dissent, however, noted that they take no position on whether the transgender athletes would be able to show a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
The legal battles arose from Idaho and West Virginia, where state laws restrict the participation of transgender girls and women in girls’ sports. Twenty-five other states have similar laws.
Idaho and West Virginia sustained losses in lower courts. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday reverses those decisions.
At issue were the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and Title IX, a civil rights law enacted in 1972 to bar sex discrimination in education. It was updated in 1974 to specifically open more opportunities for girls’ and women’s sports.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against West Virginia’s law that would require biological boys to compete on boys or co-ed teams. A transgender female student challenged the law, and the 4th Circuit sided with the transgender student.
Meanwhile, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction, halting Idaho from enforcing its Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bases sports participation on biological sex.
Similar to the West Virginia law, a transgender female student wishing to run track at Boise State University challenged the law as running afoul of the 14th Amendment.
