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The outcome of a pair of cases on Tuesday could affect laws in 27 states that prohibit transgender girls from joining girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Demonstrators outside of the Supreme Court in Washington on Tuesday. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
Jan. 13, 2026Updated 4:54 p.m. ET
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday seemed inclined to uphold a pair of state laws barring the participation of transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams.
The outcome of the cases from West Virginia and Idaho has implications for the 25 other states with similar laws, and for athletes who compete in school and collegiate sports around the country.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, a high school sophomore from West Virginia, and Lindsay Hecox, a college senior in Idaho, challenged the laws, which require that participation on sports teams for girls be based on “biological sex,” defined as a person’s sex assigned at birth.
During more than three hours of lively discussion, the justices grappled with concerns about fairness, scientific uncertainty and discrimination and seemed divided along ideological lines.
The three liberal justices, appearing to recognize the likely outcome, suggested through their questions that even if the laws are constitutional in most cases, perhaps the two transgender athletes at the heart of Tuesday’s arguments should be able to pursue their individual challenges.
Allowing their cases to be reviewed again by a lower court, the justices suggested, would give the athletes a chance to try to show that they themselves do not possess unfair competitive advantages even if some transgender girls do.
