We’re closing out our live coverage of the supreme court hearing. You can read our latest full report here:
If the court rules trans people are not covered by Title IX, it could boost policies meant to ban trans students’ bathroom access and ability to use chosen pronouns and names, and leave LGBTQ+ youth with fewer protections against harassment, bullying and discrimination.
Pepper-Jackson said in a statement last week that she plays sports to “make friends, have fun, and challenge myself through practice and teamwork”, adding: “All I’ve ever wanted was the same opportunities as my peers. But in 2021, politicians in my state passed a law banning me – the only transgender student athlete in the entire state – from playing as who I really am. This is unfair to me and every transgender kid who just wants the freedom to be themselves.”
After oral arguments on Tuesday, the supreme court received an emergency application in another legal battle involving transgender students.
The New York Times reports that the emergency application related to a California law from 2024 that bars schools from asking teachers to notify parents if their children change their names or pronouns in school.
In December, a federal district judge said parents did have a right to be notified. Federal appeals court judges then paused that ruling. Lawyers for the plaintiffs have now asked supreme court justices to weigh in, potentially lining up another case with wide-ranging implications for LGBTQ+ rights.
Attorneys from both sides are now exiting the court. The left side of the protesters are chanting “Becky” for the teen plaintiff represented by national LGBTQ organizations including the ACLU, Becky Pepper-Jackson.
The legal team representing West Virginia’s law is speaking to press while the anti-trans speakers continue to the right.
Supreme court appears likely to rule in favor of states that ban transgender athletes in school sports
After more than three hours of arguments, the supreme court’s conservative justices signalled sympathy toward the legality of Idaho and West Virginia state laws banning transgender athletes from participating on female sports teams.
Here is a brief summary of some of key points from the proceedings, per Reuters.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the federal government, certain states, the NCAA governing body for college sports and the US Olympic Committee “think that allowing transgender women and girls to participate will undermine or reverse that amazing success, and will create unfairness”. “Obviously, one of the great successes in America over the last 50 years has been the growth of women’s and girls’ sports. And it’s inspiring,” he said.
Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general arguing for the state, also touched on that issue. “If women don’t have their own competitions, they won’t be able to compete,” Hurst said. “Idaho’s law classifies on the basis of sex, because sex is what matters in sports,” Hurst told the justices. “It correlates strongly with countless athletic advantages, like size, muscle mass, bone mass and heart and lung capacity.”
But “gender identity does not matter in sports,” Hurst argued, “and that’s why Idaho’s law does not classify on the basis of gender identity. It treats all males equally and all females equally regardless of identity. And its purpose is exactly what the [state] legislature said - preserving women’s equal opportunity.”
The challengers argued that these measures discriminate based on an individual’s sex or status as a transgender person in violation of the constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that bars discrimination in education “on the basis of sex”.
“It is undisputed that states may separate their sports teams based on sex in light of the real biological differences between males and females. States may equally apply that valid sex-based rule to biological males who self-identify as female,”
said the Trump administration’s lawyer Hashim Mooppan, arguing in support of the states.“Denying a special accommodation to trans-identifying individuals does not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender identity or deny equal protection. All of that remains true even assuming a man could take drugs that eliminate his sex-based physiological advantages,” Mooppan said.
West Virginia solicitor general Michael Williams, arguing for the state, called the challenge a “backdoor attack on Title IX”. The challenger, Williams said, “says that West Virginia schools can no longer designate teams by looking to biological sex. Instead, schools must place students on sports teams based on their self-identified gender. But that idea turns Title IX - a law Congress passed to protect educational opportunities for girls - into a law that actually denies those opportunities for girls. The court should not embrace that backwards logic.”
The plaintiffs maintained that the use of puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones by transgender students should matter regarding whether states can lawfully apply these bans because these medications may prevent or eliminate sex-based physical advantages. Defenders of the bans said such advantages remain despite medical treatments. “In short, male athletes who take performance-altering drugs are not similarly situated to female athletes, and states need not treat them the same,” Mooppan said.
Kathleen Hartnett, representing the plaintiff who challenged Idaho’s law, said her client mitigated the competitive advantage through the use of testosterone suppressants and oestrogen, eliminating the ban’s justification.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
And that’s it, arguments have ended.
Oral arguments are running later than anticipated, and both groups of demonstrators outside the supreme court are attempting to maintain the momentum. The tension is higher than previous recent protests around trans rights outside the court, such as Skrmetti.
Right wing content creators are bird-dogging trans advocates speaking to press, and anti-trans protesters are moving into the trans rights crowd.
Amy Coney Barrett returns to a theme raised several times by the court’s conservatives: If transgender girls with no competitive advantage can join girls’ sports in West Virginia, would boys be able to join girls’ teams if they also have a similar skill level?
Block replied, no. Boys and girls have separate teams to give girls athletic opportunities without having to face other players who have the physical advantages that come with male puberty; not based on how good they are at sports.
Pepper-Jackson, he went on, did not go through male puberty and so is “completely in the position she could have been if her sex assigned at birth was female”.
Indeed, given that she had been through female puberty, Block argued that Pepper-Jackson has no physiological / competitive advantage.
The purpose of sex separation is to control for the sex-based differential that comes through puberty. By virtue of her medical care, BPJ has controlled for those sex-based advantages.
Updated
Joshua Block, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, is now arguing on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson.
Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether the court’s landmark 2020 finding that federal law protects transgender people from workplace discrimination also applies to women’s sports.
Roberts sided with the majority in that decision, but indicated that the reasoning might not apply in this case.
The question here is whether or not a sex-based classification is necessarily a transgender classification.
Trans youth athletes speak out: 'Sports is my everything'
In the lead up to today’s oral arguments, we spoke with trans youth athletes and their families about the role of sports in their lives and the toll of exclusionary policies.
Here are clips from interviews with three students:
More from those conversations here:
Hashim Mooppan is now arguing for the Trump administration for the second time today, this time in support of West Virginia’s state law.
In his opening statement, Williams said:
The law is indifferent to gender identity because sports are indifferent to gender identity.
He also argued that transgender girls have inherent biological advantages, though Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers have said that she does not because of puberty-blocking medications.
The 15-year-old is the only known transgender student-athlete seeking to compete in the state.
Outside the supreme court, the crowd on both sides has slowly started dissipating, particularly the anti-trans side, though speakers continue.
On the anti-trans side to the right, speakers can be heard arguing that gender is biologically constructed; much of the rhetoric is focused on calling trans women “men” and claiming they are “male athletes”.
To the left, a group of West Virginians who traveled by bus to DC are telling the crowd they stand with Becky Pepper-Jackson: “[US senator] Jim Justice doesn’t speak for West Virginia.”
In his opening remarks, West Virginia’s solicitor general Michael Williams said that the state legislature “reasonably and rationally defined sex based on biology and acknowledged the physical differences biology creates”.
He argued that this “preserves the enduring structure on which girls’ sports depends”.
Arguments in Idaho case end as court moves on to West Virginia challenge
The arguments in the first case have now ended, justices are now hearing arguments in a challenge to a West Virginia law by high school student Becky Pepper-Jackson (she was in middle school when the case began).
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And conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Harnett how she can argue that there is discrimination based on transgender status when anyone, including transgender boys, can play on boys’ sports teams under the Idaho law, meaning only trans girls are affected.
Hartnett said the court has not required the entire protected class to be excluded in other similar cases, and reiterated that her case focuses on a specific subgroup targeted by the law.
Conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh also asked if allowing transgender athletes on girls and women’s teams would “undermine or reverse” recent success of growing girls’ and women’s sports.
One of the great successes in America over the last 50 years has been the growth of women and girl’s sports. And it’s inspiring.
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.
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Harnett added that examples of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports who have “participated and excelled” are “few and far between”.
Harnett said that Idaho justifies its sports ban by arguing there’s a need to protect female athletes against male “biological advantages”.
She argued that distinction no longer applies to her client, who she said has mitigated any biological advantage by suppressing testosterone for over a year and taking oestrogen.
Kathleen Harnett, the lawyer representing Lindsay Hecox, is now arguing.
Mooppan also argued that the Idaho law was valid because such a small number of people assigned male at birth identify as transgender.
This is somewhat ironic given that trans rights advocates often argue that the entire issue receives disproportionate focus and scrutiny considering the tiny number of trans athletes.
As the Associated Press notes, sometimes the legal plaintiffs in sports ban cases have been the only openly transgender athlete in their state.
Indeed, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association recently told Congress that fewer than 10 of the more than 550,000 college athletes nationwide are openly transgender.
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Hashim Mooppan argues for the Trump administration
Mooppan argued that states are allowed to separate their sports teams by sex because of “the real biological differences between males and females” and that states may also “equally apply that valid sex-based rule” to males who identify as female.
It is undisputed that states may separate their sports teams based on sex in light of the real biological differences between males and females.
States may equally apply that valid sex-based rule to biological males who self identify as female.
Denying a special accommodation to trans-identifying individuals does not discriminate on the basis of sex or gender identity or deny equal protection.
He argued that remained “true, even assuming a man could take drugs that eliminate his sex-based physiological advantages”.
Male athletes who take performance-altering drugs are not similarly situated to female athletes, and states need not treat them the same.
Updated
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration for both cases is Hashim Mooppan, he will argue in support of the state bans on transgender students competing on girls’ sports teams.
Outside the scaffolded front of the supreme court, two almost-equally sized crowds battle for the loudest mics, while armed cops and federal agents in bulletproof vests lined the periphery and walked through the crowds.
On the left at the slightly larger pro-trans rally, racially diverse families with trans children and advocates with the ACLU and other groups working on the case danced to disco and chanted “we are not going back!”
To the right, the anti-trans crowd of largely older white people and young cis white women in athletics uniforms held signs about “biology matters,” “Gays Against Groomers,” and “protecting women’s sports”.
Anti-trans campaigner and Trump proponent Riley Gaines introduced Brooke Slusser, who made a name for herself going after her college volleyball teammate Blaire Fleming, saying she was harmed by having to travel with a trans woman. Speakers led the crowd in prayer from the stage.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s liberal justices, pressed Hurst on the issue of mootness and why the court is hearing this case.
Noting in particular the negative attention that Hecox said she had received by being involved in this case, Sotomayor said that if the justices don’t dismiss the case they would be forcing “an unwilling plaintiff” to continue to be involved in a high-profile case.
Hurst replied that it’s important for the court to consider both cases today because of the precedent set by the 9th circuit in this case - that “sex” includes “gender identity” for constitutional purposes.
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Justice Neil Gorsuch asks whether transgender people should be considered a legally protected class
Justice Neil Gorsuch chimed in with a big question about whether transgender people should be considered a legally protected class.
Gorsuch, a member of the court’s conservative majority, is one of the most closely watched justices in this case. He wrote a key 2020 decision upholding workplace discrimination protections for transgender people, but in 2025 joined the majority in allowing states to ban certain healthcare for transgender youth.
Hurst replied that he did not question there has been “some discrimination against transgender people, significant discrimination” in the United States, but said it did not compare with that historically faced by black people and women.
Updated
On the issue of whether the case is moot, the justices have said they would wait to make a decision about whether to dismiss it until after today’s argument.
A reminder that Lindsay Hecox, the transgender college student who challenged Idaho’s state law, sought to have her case dismissed in September, arguing that she is no longer pursuing sports and doesn’t want further harassment.
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Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, has said in defense of the state law:
Idaho’s law classifies on the basis of sex, because sex is what matters in sports. It correlates strongly with countless athletic advantages, like size, muscle mass, bone mass and heart and lung capacity.
Updated
A reminder that the first case is a transgender college student’s challenge to Idaho’s state law banning trans women and girls from women’s sports teams.
Updated
Supreme court oral arguments begin
Oral proceedings have begun, we’ll bring you all the key developments here.
At issue is whether state bans on trans girls in athletics violate the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which ensures the law applies equally to all, or Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination.
Updated
As the highest court in the US debates their rights to participate in school sports, five trans youth and their families spoke to the Guardian about the role athletics has played in their lives. The students are based in California, a state that has long had trans-inclusive policies.
The youth described the joy sports brings them and how meaningful it has been to play on teams that match their gender identity. They said sports were about community, team-building, socializing and exercising, like they are for so many youth in the US. Some expressed frustration and anxiety about the national debates focused on “fairness” in competition, saying the legal battle was about fighting for their place in society and their fundamental rights to access the same opportunities as their peers.
Here are some excerpts of their reflections:
For context, in the last five years, 27 states have restricted trans children and teens’ access to school sports – most targeting trans girls, but some applying to all trans youth.
The anti-LGBTQ+ legal movement shifted its focus to trans athletes after the supreme court legalized marriage equality in 2015. Supporters of bans on trans athletes, including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the major Christian legal group defending the state laws today, argue they are promoting fairness and safety in women’s sports.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates counter there is no credible evidence that inclusive sports policies have endangered cis girls and women, and the controversy is manufactured by anti-trans activists; one conservative group, for example, acknowledged in 2019 that its polling suggested people could be swayed to support Republicans with ads raising fears about trans girls in sports.
The GOP’s escalating campaign against trans youth athletes is directed at a minuscule fraction of the population. The National Collegiate Athletic Association president testified in 2024 he was aware of fewer than 10 trans college athletes, and Republican legislators have at times struggled to identify any trans girls playing sports in their states.
Meanwhile, states such as California have long allowed trans youth to play on teams that match their gender with little pushback – until the issue became subject to national debate.
While there are few out trans youth on sports teams at all levels, advocates note the bans have been devastating for those directly affected and LGBTQ+ youth who may be avoiding athletics due to the climate.
Advocates are not optimistic the supreme court will block the sports bans, but hope the decision will be narrow. Last year, the court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. The ruling was a devastating blow for access to vital medical treatments, but was limited to healthcare and did not, as some had feared, establish a broader precedent supporting anti-trans legislation.
Lawyers for Hecox and Pepper-Jackson argue the bans violate the equal protection clause of the constitution, and in the West Virginia case, attorneys also argue the ban violates Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools.
One crucial question the court will consider is whether the laws are discriminatory against trans people and merit what’s known as “heightened scrutiny” – a more rigorous review, meaning the government has a higher burden to justify the bans. The court has never issued a ruling addressing whether it considers trans people a class that deserves this protection.
If the court were to use the sports cases to rule that laws targeting trans people do not warrant heightened scrutiny, then “any type of law discriminating against trans people is going to be presumptively constitutional”, said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the LGBTQ and HIV projects at the ACLU, which is representing both students.
“These laws were passed to establish a legal principle that transgender girls and women shouldn’t be treated like other girls and women, and then to use that principle as a jumping-off point for rolling back protections for transgender people more generally,” said Block, who is presenting oral arguments.
Scott Skinner-Thompson, a Colorado law school professor, said he feared the ruling could leave trans people with “minimal constitutional protections” from laws explicitly targeting them:
That would further embolden legislators to continue to pass laws that exclude transgender people from public life.
In addition to bolstering laws banning trans people from bathrooms, that outcome could also make it even harder for incarcerated trans people to access critical healthcare and safe housing, said Skinner-Thompson, who signed an amicus brief arguing the bans should remain blocked.
The broad question in these cases is: are we a society that’s interested in recognizing people’s common humanity, or are we more interested in excluding people for the purpose of a particular version of what counts as ‘fair’?
The ruling could also establish that trans people are not protected under Title IX, which could be catastrophic, said Block. A school could deny admission to or expel a student on the basis of them being trans and it wouldn’t be considered a Title IX violation, he said.
In one particularly damaging outcome, which he hoped was unlikely, Block said the court could support the Trump administration’s assertions that Title IX requires that schools ban trans girls from sports. That would potentially invalidate policies in Democratic-run states that allow or mandate trans inclusion in youth athletics.
In the first case, Little v Hecox, Lindsay Hecox, a trans college student, challenged Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law categorically banning trans women and girls from women’s sports teams, which passed in 2020, blocking her from track at age 19. She has since sought to have the case dismissed, arguing she is no longer pursuing sports and doesn’t want to be subjected to ongoing harassment. But the US supreme court decided to hear the case, anyway.
In the second case, West Virginia v BPJ, 15-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson has challenged her state’s law banning her track participation, saying in a recent statement:
This case isn’t just about me, or even just about sports. It’s just one part of a plan to push transgender people like me out of public life entirely.
Analysis: How the US supreme court case on trans athletes could unravel LGBTQ+ rights
The two bans in question were both previously blocked by federal courts, but the states appealed to the supreme court, which is hearing a case on trans people’s access to sports for the first time. If the court’s conservative supermajority sides with the states and upholds the bans, the rulings could have significant ripple effects, paving the way for the enforcement of a range of anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
If the rulings are broad, civil rights advocates warn, the supreme court could make it easier for lawmakers and school officials to ban trans students’ access to appropriate bathrooms and facilities, restrict LGBTQ+ youth’s ability to use chosen names and pronouns, enforce strict dress codes, limit protections against anti-LGBTQ+ harassment, and further deny access to accurate identification documents.
“It’s really scary. The supreme court is poised to tell us whether dislike and moral disapproval of a specific group can be a real basis to make law,” said Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.
US supreme court considers state bans on transgender athletes in school sports
The US supreme court is considering the rights of transgender youth athletes on Tuesday in a major hearing on state laws banning trans girls from girls sports teams.
Oral arguments center on two cases of trans students who sued over the Republican-backed laws in Idaho and West Virginia prohibiting them from participating in girls athletic programs. The cases could have far-reaching implications for civil rights, with a ruling against the athletes potentially eroding a range of protections for trans youth and LGBTQ+ people more broadly.
In West Virginia v BPJ, 15-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson challenged the state’s 2021 law banning her from track. A federal court blocked the ban, but the state appealed to the supreme court.
In the second case, Little v Hecox, Lindsay Hecox, a trans college student pursuing track, sued to overturn Idaho’s first-in-the-nation 2020 law categorically banning trans women and girls from women’s sports teams. She has since pushed to have the case dismissed, saying she is not doing sports in college and doesn’t want further harassment, but the supreme court is still hearing the matter.
Twenty-seven states have now restricted trans youth access to school sports – most with laws targeting trans girls, but some applying to all trans youth. Defenders of the bans argue they are promoting fairness and safety in women’s sports, while trans rights advocates counter the laws are cruel and discriminatory, and that there’s no credible evidence inclusive sports policies have endangered cis girls and women.
We’ll bring you all the latest from inside and outside the court as we get it.
