Supreme Court transgender athlete cases FAQ: What to expect

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases pertaining to transgender athletes on Tuesday: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. The cases bring the national debate over whether transgender girls and women should be eligible to compete in girls’ and women’s sports to the country’s highest court.

Little v. Hecox is a dispute over the first state law, Idaho’s HB 500, that barred transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s school and college sports. Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law in March 2020, and Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman, challenged it weeks later because she wanted to try out for Boise State’s women’s track and cross country teams. A U.S. district court in Idaho granted Hecox an injunction, and she tried out for the Broncos’ cross country team, but she did not make it. Hecox instead participated in women’s club soccer and running, which are also affected by HB 500. After a series of appeals by the state, the Supreme Court agreed last July to hear the case. Hecox’s attorneys argue, in part, that the Idaho law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Similarly, West Virginia v. B.P.J. puts West Virginia’s HB 3293, one of 27 state laws that restrict transgender girls and women from sports, in front of the Supreme Court. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old transgender girl, was entering middle school when the law passed in April 2021. Pepper-Jackson wanted to compete on her school’s sports teams, but her school principal told the family the state law prevented her participation. Pepper-Jackson and her family challenged West Virginia’s law the summer before she began middle school, and she has since been allowed to participate in cross country and track and field. Pepper-Jackson’s attorneys argue, in part, that her right to compete on the girls’ teams is guaranteed by Title IX because her gender identity matches the category and she has undergone an estrogen-driven puberty. West Virginia argues, in part, that her participation on girls’ teams violates Title IX because her birth sex is not female. Last July, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

The athletes will not testify during Tuesday’s oral arguments. Their lawyers will present their cases to the court on their behalf. Likewise, attorneys for Little and West Virginia will represent their side of the debate.

Here’s what you need to know about the cases before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments.

What’s at stake?

In simple terms: The future of transgender girls and women in girls’ and women’s sports.

Since Idaho passed HB 500, 26 other states have passed laws restricting access to girls’ and women’s sports for transgender students in schools and universities that receive public funds. In the past few years, a number of international federations have enacted similarly restrictive policies: World Aquatics (swimming, diving and water polo) allows only transgender women who never experienced testosterone-driven puberty to compete in the women’s category at elite events such as the world championships, and World Athletics (track and field and road running) bans all transgender women in the women’s category.

In the United States, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 5, 2025, that said schools and states that allow transgender girls and women to participate in girls’ and women’s school sports are in violation of Title IX and risk federal funding. That led the NCAA to change its policy to align with the executive order. Additionally, United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland and president and chair Gene Sykes directed national governing bodies to update their transgender policies to “comply with federal expectations.” Many organizations under the USOPC have implemented new policies, and some impact youth sports opportunities.

When and how did the legal landscape change regarding transgender athlete participation?

Idaho state legislator Barbara Ehardt said she was inspired to write HB 500 after two transgender athletes won high school track and field state titles in Connecticut in 2018.

“It’s not just a bill that I sponsored, the entire idea was mine, and that’s why it took two years to finally come to pass,” Ehardt said. “And then each year to see so many states take it up and pass it … it has been a unique experience, and it’s been an incredibly gratifying one.”

Since HB 500 was signed into law in 2020, the debate over transgender participation made national news after former Penn student-athlete Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, won an NCAA Division I swimming national championship in 2022. The issue returned to the headlines after Blaire Fleming, also a transgender woman, played on San Jose State’s women’s volleyball team. Multiple teams in the Mountain West Conference chose to forfeit rather than play against SJSU in 2024, and SJSU captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit against the NCAA, arguing that Fleming’s participation on the SJSU volleyball team posed a safety risk and violated Title IX.

What do the Idaho and West Virginia laws say about sports participation for transgender students?

Idaho’s HB 500 and West Virginia’s HB 3293 are not identical, but they do similar things. Both laws identify “interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams” as the range of activities to which the restrictions for transgender athletes apply. Both laws establish three categories for sports: female, male and co-ed, and both laws restrict access to the female category by closing it to students defined as male. HB 3293 (West Virginia) defines biological sex as determined by an “individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” HB 500 (Idaho) does not formally define biological sex but says in the case of a dispute, a student can establish biological sex through physical exam and statement from their healthcare provider that bases their findings on at least one of these factors: “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”

Why is the Supreme Court hearing two cases?

It’s not uncommon for the court to hear multiple cases that present similar, if not the same, legal questions, especially on a controversial or large issue.

“There are many other examples of when a big issue is up at the court, they will take two cases,” said ACLU senior counsel Joshua Block, who will present oral arguments for B.P.J. at the Supreme Court. “Another reason to do that is if they’re worried about a jurisdictional problem coming up in one of the cases that they have another one to go to.”

One possible issue that could arise on Tuesday is that Hecox asked the Supreme Court not to decide her case at all. She is no longer participating in sports in Idaho and therefore contends her case is “moot.” Idaho contends the case is not moot because the state and Boise State University still have an interest in enforcing HB 500.

Which federal laws and constitutional questions will be in play?

The primary questions are about Title IX and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

What is Title IX and how does it apply to transgender people?

Title IX was passed by Congress in 1972 and bars sex-based discrimination in schools receiving federal funds, including in school-sponsored programs and activities. It is largely credited with creating and expanding girls’ and women’s sports programs, but it applies to schools broadly. The law is 37 words, but in 1975, Congress approved regulations for Title IX’s application. Enforcement power belongs to the Department of Education.

Title IX does not say anything about transgender students or transgender athletes. But in May 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance stating Title IX applied to transgender students and that to be compliant with the law, transgender students should be allowed to access bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams in accordance with their gender identities. This guidance never fully went into effect because multiple state governments sued the Obama administration. The first Trump administration rescinded that guidance, and then the Biden administration moved to expand transgender students’ rights, but the policy got tied up in court. The second Trump administration has issued multiple executive orders that roll back governmental recognition of transgender people in sports and beyond.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on the question of how Title IX applies to transgender students. But in June of 2021, the court declined to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy and student at Gloucester High School in Virginia. Grimm sued his school system because he was not allowed to continue to use the boys’ bathroom after school officials originally allowed him to do so. The Fourth Circuit, the same circuit that heard Pepper-Jackson’s case, ruled in Grimm’s favor twice. In declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court allowed the Fourth Circuit’s ruling to stand.

B.P.J. also argues that Title IX protects transgender students, though the case focuses on sports and not bathrooms. B.P.J. argues that West Virginia’s law violates Title IX because the law is a categorical ban that unfairly prohibits transgender girls and women who don’t have the physiological advantages associated with testosterone-driven puberty to be eligible for girls’ and women’s sports.

West Virginia counters with the argument that Title IX was enacted to provide equal opportunities and ensure fair competition for girls and women, as determined by birth sex, and gender identity should have nothing to do with it.

What is the equal protection clause and how does it apply to transgender people?

The equal protection clause — part of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868 — prohibits states from creating laws that violate the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” and also cannot deny someone the “equal protection of the laws.”

Hecox argues that HB 500 violates the equal protection clause because the Idaho law rests “on overbroad generalizations about the sexes.”

Idaho rejects that argument. “Nothing in the Equal Protection Clause requires Idaho to treat males who identify as women as if they were female, in sports or elsewhere,” the state argues.

Additionally, Hecox argues that the Supreme Court needs to apply heightened scrutiny to HB 500 because it discriminates against a group of people. Heightened scrutiny requires states to prove that the government has a “substantial and clearly related interest” in creating a law that discriminates. Heightened scrutiny is a higher bar for states to clear.

Idaho argues against heightened scrutiny because “a sex classification does not become a transgender-status classification simply by failing to make exceptions based on gender identity.”

The Supreme Court recently rejected heightened scrutiny in a different case involving transgender youth. The court allowed a Tennessee law barring access to gender-affirming care for minors to stand in its June 2025 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti. In that case, the court rejected the argument that the law should be subjected to heightened scrutiny, ruling that it did not “classify on any bases that warrant heightened review.” Although those challenging laws barring access to gender-affirming care for minors argued that they discriminated against transgender people, the Supreme Court held that the laws regulated age and medical purpose, and therefore did not require heightened scrutiny. The impact of the decision was the court sidestepped one of the central tensions in both Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.: Is transgender identity a classification protected by the equal protection clause?

What cases provide context and insight into how the Supreme Court will consider the arguments?

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020) is frequently cited in the transgender athlete debate. In that case, the court ruled, in a 6-3 vote, that employers who fire employees for being gay or bisexual or transgender violate Title VII — part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to employment discrimination — because doing so constitutes sex-based discrimination. That ruling generated questions about protections for LGBTQ+ individuals under Title IX.

Justice Neil Gorsuch addressed those concerns in the majority opinion. “The employers worry that our decision will sweep beyond Title VII to other federal or state laws that prohibit sex discrimination,” Gorsuch wrote. “But none of these other laws are before us; we have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today.”

In other words, the Bostock ruling does not automatically apply to Title IX, even though both laws bar sex-based discrimination.

But in his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito specifically pointed to transgender athletes as a concern. “The effect of the Court’s reasoning may be to force young women to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage,” Alito wrote, “including students who have the size and strength of a male but identify as female and students who are taking male hormones in order to transition from female to male.”

Since Bostock, the composition of the court has changed, and it’s unclear how relevant that vote will be to these proceedings. Skrmetti, which was a 6-3 decision by the current justices, allowed a gender-affirming health care ban for minors to stand.

Do the cases apply beyond sports?

Both proponents and opponents of restrictions on transgender women and girls in sports see the legislation as a gateway to legislation and policy affecting transgender people in other areas of life.

Ehardt, who sponsored Idaho’s HB 500, also was the floor sponsor for a bill during Idaho’s 2025 legislative session that limits access to single-sex facilities such as bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons and residence halls at public universities to those who are assigned that sex at birth. Gov. Little signed Ehardt’s bill into law on April 1.

“I also knew, and said so at the time, that it would be the sports issue that would open it up for all the other issues,” Ehardt said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents both Hecox and Pepper-Jackson, sees that connection as well. The organization has been involved in multiple legal challenges to laws affecting transgender athletes and young people.

“Idaho wants to use this case as a jumping-off point for establishing a really broad principle that the government can discriminate against transgender people in all contexts,” Block said. “And that it should be treated as presumptively constitutional.”

How can the public follow the Supreme Court arguments?

Supreme Court arguments are not streamed or broadcast on TV. The Supreme Court website provides live audio starting at 10 a.m. ET and releases transcripts at the end of the day. The court will hear Little v. Hecox in the morning session. West Virginia v. B.P.J. is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ESPN will provide live updates from inside and outside the Supreme Court throughout the day,

What happens next?

After the cases are argued, the court will deliberate and publish an opinion, or opinions. The possible outcomes range from procedural dismissals, to narrow rulings, to landscape-altering orders. The decision’s timing is unknown. Opinions are generally published during non-argument sessions. According to the Supreme Court’s public calendar, the first non-argument session after oral arguments will be Feb. 20. There is one non-argument session in March, another in April, three in May and four in June. This is subject to change as the term continues, and more opinion days could be added.