Supreme Court ruled 6-3 transgender athlete bans do not violate Equal Protection Clause

On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (No. 24-43) that state laws banning transgender women and girls from women's and girls' sports teams do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The consolidated case addressed challenges to athletic-exclusion laws enacted by West Virginia and Idaho. Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion; in a separate unanimous holding, the Court found that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 permits schools and states to maintain separate sports teams defined by biological sex.

Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion stated that "consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the States may maintain women's and girls' sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women's and girls' sports based on biological sex." The ruling is explicitly limited to the sports context, distinguishing it from employment or educational settings where equal protection generally requires government to treat individuals without regard to sex. The majority held the decision permissive -- states may exclude transgender athletes but are not constitutionally required to do so.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by two other justices, dissented, writing that "West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B.P.J. and others like her the benefits of playing sports simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not." The ruling removes the Equal Protection Clause as the primary federal constitutional defense that transgender athletes across all states had used to challenge exclusion laws, ending the constitutional protection that had been the strongest available legal tool against categorical exclusion from school sports.