Supreme Court upholds bans on transgender girls in school sports

The Supreme Court upheld state bans on transgender girls in girls’ and women’s school sports in West Virginia and Idaho, not imposing a nationwide ban. The decision left existing state and school policies intact where they already exist and pushed the next battle to states and school systems that still allow transgender participation.

President Donald Trump called the ruling a “BIG WIN” and cast it as a rebuke to men competing in women’s sports. Republicans called the outcome the product of a yearslong campaign through statehouses and school boards. Transgender advocates and civil-rights groups called it a deepening of the rollback of transgender rights. The court had agreed on July 3, 2025, to hear the Idaho and West Virginia appeals and heard arguments in January 2026 before issuing the June 30 ruling as part of its end-of-term decisions.

Many party leaders did not rush into a public fight over an issue that has repeatedly caused intraparty friction, even as Democrats have generally opposed Republican restrictions.

Republicans spent about $215 million on anti-transgender advertising in the 2024 campaign. AP VoteCast found that more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society had gone too far. Gallup found in May 2024 that 69 percent of U.S. adults said transgender athletes should compete only on teams matching their birth sex, while support for allowing participation based on current gender identity fell to 26 percent, down from 34 percent in 2021.

Senate Democrats unanimously blocked a Republican bill on March 3, 2025, that would have banned transgender athletes in federally funded women’s sports.

The practical impact of the ruling is uneven: the NCAA had already changed its policy to bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports, limiting the immediate effect on many college programs, while states such as Idaho and West Virginia can now enforce or expand their own bans.