The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in its next term in a pair of cases out of West Virginia and Idaho challenging state laws against participation by trans athletes in girls' and women's team sports.
Our currently very conservative Supreme Court is not going to shy away from the culture war over the existence of trans people and the fairness of trans girls and women participating in team sports against cisgender girls and women. On Thursday, the court announced it would take up a pair of legal challenges against state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban trans athletes from sports competitions.
No date for oral arguments in the case has been set.
As the New York Times reports, the West Virginia case, West Virginia v. BPG, was brought by a transgender middle schooler who sued the state in order to be able to participate as a girl on her school's cross-country team. The high court earlier issued a temporary order in the case, in April 2023, allowing the girl to continue participating on the team while an appeal in her case moved forward.
The Idaho case, Little v. Hecox, involves a trans college student at Boise State University, who similarly challenged her state's law, the Fairness In Women's Sports Act, which was enacted in 2020.
Both cases ask the court whether laws barring sports participation by trans female athletes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The text of the "questions presented" to the court in the Idaho case is offensive on its face, and engages in an argument of trans erasure.
"Women and girls have overcome decades of discrimination to achieve a more equal playing field in many arenas of American life — including sports," the text reads. "Yet in some competitions, female athletes have become bystanders in their own sports as male athletes who identify as female have taken the place of their female competitors—on the field and on the winners’ podium."
The petitioners, led by Idaho Governor Bradley Little, go on to say that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals went against precedent and "biological reality" in ruling in favor of the rights of trans athletes, putting "transgender women and girls" in scare quotes and adding "meaning males who identify as women and girls."
A ruling from the Supreme Court in the cases will have broad, nationwide repurcussions for years to come for the treatment of trans people in athletics. And it may come down to whether the three slightly more centrist justices, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, accept that trans people exist and decide to right the wrong committed against trans kids by their ruling last month that let stand a Tennessee law barring healthcare interventions for trans kids, including puberty-blocking drugs.
In May, the court dealt another blow to trans people, allowing President Trump's executive order barring trans people from the military to stand while challenges to it play out in lower courts.
Last month, Trump took direct aim at a single sports competition in California involving a single trans female athlete, who has since been identified as AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School in Riverside County, threatening to witthold federal school funds from the state as a whole all because Hernandez was allowed to compete and win at a state track meet.
Previously: Trans Athlete AB Hernandez Wins Triple Medals at CA Track Finals Amid Policy Change, Protests
Top image: A protester waves a transgender pride flag outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. Advocates organized a rally in response the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in US v. Skrmetti, in which the justices ruled to uphold state bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
