Adam Zivo: Why American transgender athletes lost the right to play female sports

Defenders of female sports categories gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as they wait for rulings on June 30, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that states can ban trans-identifying males (“transgender women”) from female sports in the interest of athletic fairness. Although critics have denounced this decision as discriminatory, it is, in reality, a victory for common sense and judicial restraint.

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Over the past six years, 27 states have enacted policies barring males, regardless of their gender identity, from competing in female sports. Their rationale has been straightforward: males enjoy an inherent strength advantage over females and ergo cannot fairly compete against them, and this advantage is not erased when transgender-identified males use puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

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Two transgender students separately challenged these bans in West Virginia and Idaho, where they initially secured favourable rulings in lower courts. The Supreme Court then adjudicated their cases together and overturned the previous rulings, establishing a definitive national precedent.

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The litigants argued that the bans violated Title IX —  a civil rights statute which bars discrimination “on the basis of sex” — and the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equality under the law.

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The Supreme Court unanimously found that Title IX had not been violated, but was split on the 14th Amendment: six conservative justices believed that the bans were clearly constitutional, while three liberal justices disagreed.

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The majority ruling, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, explained that Title IX was enacted in 1972, when “sex” ordinarily meant “biological sex and not gender identity,” making a gender-based interpretation of its wording implausible. Although Title IX did not originally address sports, it was amended in 1974 to require “reasonable provisions” for athletic fairness, spurring comprehensive regulations for female-only teams.

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Kavanaugh and his colleagues found that West Virginia and Idaho’s bans on males in female sports did not violate Title IX because, in the context of athletics, the statute expressly permits sex segregation.

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The litigants actually agreed that Title IX concerns biological sex, but argued that, while athletic sex segregation is generally defensible, it would be unreasonable to deny exceptions to transgender-identified males who have taken puberty blockers or hormones.

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This did not persuade the court’s conservative justices, who found that nothing in the statute’s language requires that exceptions be made on the basis of gender identity. As such, while American policymakers can debate transgender inclusion in female sports (and, indeed, may even permit it within their own jurisdictions), Title IX does not prohibit laws requiring such athletes to compete according to their sex.

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All three liberal justices concurred that Title IX was not violated, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her written dissent, disagreed on whether the statute only provides sex-based protections. She cited three previous Title IX cases — from 1978, 1999 and 2005 — that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, and argued that, as such stereotypes are not rooted in biology, this jurisprudence suggests gender identity may be protected, too.