U.S. Supreme Court issues opinion backing Idaho’s trans athlete law
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an opinion that allows states to bar transgender women and girls from participating in sports that align with their gender identity.
The court issued its opinion on the last day of its session., and about six years after a Boise State University student challenged Idaho’s law barring trans women and girls from participating in women’s and girls sports.
Justices in Washington, D.C., heard arguments in the case in January. On the same day, the court heard a similar case about a West Virginia teenager whose family challenged a state law requiring students to participate in sports that correspond with their sex assigned at birth.
The arguments centered around whether barring transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls sports violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court issued one opinion covering both cases. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who delivered the opinion, said that neither state violated the Equal Protection Clause by maintaining sports teams based on a person’s sex assigned at birth. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett concurred.
“In recent years, some biological males who identify as female have sought to play on women’s or girls’ sports teams,” the opinion said. “That modern development has triggered national and international concerns about safety and competitive fairness for female athletes, as well as related worries about preserving equal opportunity for women and girls to play sports.”
The opinion noted that in recent years, many states have passed laws similar to those in Idaho and West Virginia that restrict transgender women and girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.
The justices said the question before the court came down to whether schools can “determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex.”
“The answer,” the opinion said, “is yes.”
The argument that the laws unconstitutionally discriminate against transgender people is “unavailing,” it said. Women and girls care deeply about the sports they play, put in “extraordinary” time to train, and should be able to do so "without fear of physical injury from biological males or being forced to compete against biological males,” the opinion said.
The majority opinion also emphasized, though, that no student athlete should be “ostracized or vilified,” and that their desire to compete deserves respect.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In the opinion, she wrote that the majority was extending “greater sympathy” to young, cisgender girls and women in sports.
“I share that sympathy. Playing sports can lead to benefits that are immeasurable, and many are understandably invested in ensuring that competition stays fair and safe,” the justice wrote. “Because the majority, however, inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions, I respectfully dissent.”
During the arguments earlier this year, questions ranged from the definition of sex to the biological advantages males have over females and how laws should be handled when they adversely affect a small portion of the population. Justices posed various hypothetical questions throughout and, at times, got into tense lines of questioning while trying to understand the attorneys’ arguments and what previous cases reflect about this one.
Alan Hurst, Idaho’s former solicitor general, argued that sex “is what matters in sports,” adding that it is associated with “countless athletic advantages.”
“If women don’t have their own competitions, they won’t be able to compete,” he told justices in January.
Kathleen Hartnett of Cooley LLP, representing Hecox, countered that Supreme Court precedent is in Hecox’s favor. Hartnett said Idaho’s articulated justification of its law was to protect women’s sports from males who have a biological advantage, but Hecox, she said, had mitigated that through hormone treatment. The law, she said, “thus fails heightened scrutiny as applied to Lindsay and transgender women like her who have no sex-based biological advantage as compared to birth-sex females.”
Idaho officials celebrate opinion
Shortly after the opinion was released, Idaho Gov. Brad Little celebrated the win.
“We are leading the nation in supporting generations of women and men who fought hard to uphold Title IX protections and keep girls and women safe,” Little said in a statement. “This is a historic moment for common sense!”
Little also praised Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, who sponsored Idaho’s law in 2020 that restricted transgender women and girls from participating in women’s and girls sports.
“This has been an amazing journey,” Ehardt said in a statement. “I said from the very beginning that it would end up at the Supreme Court, and when it did, I was privileged enough to sit in that courtroom and listen,” she said in a statement.
Attorney General Raúl Labrador said he had never “wavered” defending Idaho’s law.
“The Supreme Court has now confirmed that states can preserve fair competition and protect the opportunities that generations of women fought to secure,” he said in a statement. “Every parent can rest assured that our law protects their daughters competing in Idaho.”
U.S. Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho also called the ruling a “major victory for women, fairness and the Gem State.”
“The Supreme Court’s decision affirms those protections and the generations of women who fought for fair, equal athletics,” Risch said. “Our daughters and granddaughters deserve an even playing field, and the Supreme Court has delivered.”
‘Heartbreaking ruling’
Those who defended the plaintiffs in both cases said this ruling will have harmful affects on transgender women and girls who want to participate in sports.
“This is a heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them who’ve asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers.” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, in a news release. “The reality is that the equality of transgender women and girls takes nothing away from, and in fact promotes, the equality of all women and girls.”
Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, said studies have shown the many benefits students gain from participating in sports.
“Now, one population, transgender youth and collegians, are targeted for specific and baseless discrimination,” Buchert said in a statement. “We will not be deterred and will continue to fight back to secure the equal participation that all youth, including transgender youth, deserve.”
How did we get here?
Idaho in 2020 became the first state in the country to bar trans women and girls from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity. Since then, nearly 30 other states have passed their own laws targeting trans athletes, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
Shortly after Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law, Hecox, a transgender woman who at the time was a freshman at Boise State, sued.
Hecox had long been passionate about running and loved being part of a team, she said in a 2020 declaration filed in support of a preliminary injunction. She had experienced gender dysphoria in grade school, but didn’t have the words to describe what she was feeling, the filing said. She began gender-affirming hormone therapy after high school and hoped to compete in track and cross country in college.
The case, Bradley Little, et al. v. Lindsay Hecox, et al., has since gone through years of litigation.
Days after Hecox filed the suit, an Idaho judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld an injunction against the law after a district judge found that it was likely unconstitutional. The appeals court has flipped on whether to allow the full scope of the injunction since then, a marked shift that displayed the impact of a high court decision in another case. Ultimately, the appeals court affirmed the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction to Hecox, but vacated the injunction applied to the rest of the state.
Last year, the highest court in the nation said it would take up the issue.
In September, Hecox filed a notice to dismiss the lawsuit. In the request, her attorneys said if she continued with the case, she would face more harassment that would impact her health, safety and ability to graduate. Hecox had tried out unsuccessfully for the Boise State track and cross country teams. She competed in club women’s soccer, according to court documents, but the ACLU said at the time that Hecox wasn’t participating in any women’s athletic programs covered by the bill and wanted to prioritize finishing her degree at Boise State.
A federal judge in October denied that request, saying the state has a “fair right to have its arguments heard and adjudicated once and for all” and that dismissing the case would leave “critical questions in limbo.” The U.S. Supreme Court said in an October filing that the request that the court dismiss the case as moot would be deferred pending the oral arguments.
Idaho has passed a host of other laws in recent years targeting transgender people, many of which have faced legal challenges. This year, the Legislature approved a law that makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use a bathroom or changing room in government buildings or other buildings of public accommodation that doesn’t correspond to their sex assigned at birth. In April, six transgender residents sued over the law, and earlier this month, a judge issued a narrow preliminary injunction preventing the law from being full enforced.
This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 8:28 AM.
