Supreme Court hears cases on Idaho, West Virginia transgender sports bans

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13 heard oral arguments in two cases concerning state laws requiring student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond to their biological sex rather than their gender identity.

The attorneys general of West Virginia and Idaho previously asked the high court to uphold their states’ laws, both of which were previously blocked by lower courts. The Supreme Court took up the cases shortly after it upheld a Tennessee state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender.

The laws were challenged by two students seeking to compete on women’s sports teams — one in middle school cross-country in West Virginia and the other on a university-level track and cross-country team in Idaho — that did not correspond with their biological sex.

The plaintiffs argued the bans ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause, part of the 14th Amendment, because they discriminate on the basis of sex. But the states argued their laws are aimed at preserving women’s sports for women.

The court considered the Idaho and West Virginia laws in a pair of separate, back-to-back arguments.

Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst argued his state’s law “treats all males equally and all females equally, regardless of identity. And its purpose is exactly what the legislature said: preserving women’s equal opportunity.”

Kathleen Hartnett, attorney for Lindsay Hecox, who challenged Idaho’s law, argued the law “draws a sex-based line by categorically excluding all students with the biological sex of male from women’s teams.”

In the Idaho case, arguments often focused on whether the court should rule on the challenged laws categorically on what is called an “as applied” basis, or on the individual circumstances of the two plaintiffs in the case. An “as applied” ruling could in theory allow the two plaintiffs to participate in women’s sports even if the court upheld the state laws.

But the states argued against an “as applied” ruling, arguing their laws should be upheld as constitutional without exception.

Harnett argued, “I understand the point, if there is somebody who’s coming in with an unfair biological advantage, that would undermine the entire point of separate sports in the first place, which was to allow women to have a place, to thrive, to be strong, to win, not to just be the B team.”

But she argued, “The question in this case is, if the person had actually mitigated their sex-based advantage,” whether or not they should be included in the ban.

“That’s why we are here, not proposing a rule of absolute inclusion, but saying that in the case with people like our client who have mitigated (their advantage), their exclusion doesn’t match the statutory interest,” she said.

But Hurst argued, “Medical transition does not reliably suppress all male athletic advantages.”

In the next case, Michael Williams, West Virginia solicitor general, made a similar argument.

“Title IX permits sex-separated teams,” Williams said. “It does so because biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable.”

West Virginia’s law, he argued, “like the laws of at least 26 other states, simply preserves the enduring structure on which girls’ sports depends.”

During the West Virginia arguments, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of six Catholic jurists on the high court, said that “I hate, hate that a kid who wants to play sports might not be able to play sports.” But he added, “It’s kind of a zero-sum game for a lot of teams,” citing “a lot of debate” on the topic of transgender athletes.

“Maybe there really is no advantage,” Kavanaugh said of arguments that certain medical interventions might suppress athletic advantages. “Well, if that’s true, and some states are operating under that basis, that’s the way to go.”

However, Kavanaugh also argued the loss in that scenario would be teams based on “biological sex”; and then “it’s someone else is going to get disadvantaged.”

There is no clear data on how many athletes who identify as transgender compete on teams opposite their biological sex in the U.S., as many sports associations do not track those numbers. A 2022 study by the UCLA Williams Institute found that there are approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, with nearly half of that population between the ages of 13 and 24. However, a January 2025 JAMA Pediatrics study found fewer than 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance and a gender-related diagnosis received puberty blockers from 2018 through 2022, and none of them were under the age of 12. The study did not include minors covered by Medicaid.

NCAA President Charlie Baker, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, told a Senate panel in December 2024 that out of more than 500,000 total college student athletes in the organization, he believed fewer than 10 were transgender.

In guidance on health care policy and practices released in March 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine stated the church’s opposition to interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof.”

“Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person,” the document states.

At their general assembly in November, the bishops voted to incorporate that guidance into the seventh edition of the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.” The ERDs — which the conference said were developed in consultation with medical professionals and theologians, and regularly reviewed by the USCCB — articulate ethical standards for Catholic health care in accordance with church teaching. That document is implemented as authoritative guidance on moral issues encountered by Catholic health care providers.

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