(AFP) – The US Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to wade into the hot-button issue of transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports. The court said it would hear cases next term challenging state laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning transgender athletes from female competition. More than two dozen US states have passed laws in recent years barring athletes who were assigned male at birth from taking part in girls or women’s sports.
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s decision to hear the cases comes two weeks after it upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender minors. The Supreme Court also recently backed a move by President Donald Trump, who campaigned on the issue of transgender athletes, to have transgender troops dismissed from the military. Trump issued an executive order in February aimed at banning transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports.
“From now on women’s sports will be only for women,” Trump said. “With this executive order the war on women’s sports is over.” The executive order allows federal agencies to deny funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to compete on girls or women’s teams. In a high-profile case, the University of Pennsylvania agreed this week to ban transgender athletes from its women’s sports teams, settling a federal civil rights complaint stemming from the furor around swimmer Lia Thomas.
The Department of Education said that UPenn had entered into a resolution agreement vowing to comply with Title IX, the federal law which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational program. It follows an investigation by the department’s Office for Civil Rights which found the university had violated Title IX by allowing transgender swimmer Thomas to compete in women’s competitions. Thomas became a lightning rod around the debate over transgender athletes in women’s sport after competing in female collegiate competitions in 2022. She had earlier swum on UPenn’s men’s team while undergoing hormone replacement therapy. Critics and some fellow swimmers said she should not have been allowed to compete against women due to an unfair physiological advantage.
The Idaho case accepted by the Supreme Court stems from the Republican-led state’s 2020 “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” It was challenged by a transgender athlete at an Idaho university and lower courts ruled that it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. West Virginia’s 2021 ban on transgender athletes was challenged by a middle school student who was not allowed to compete for the girls’ track team. An appeals court ruled that the ban was a violation of Title IX.
“We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play,” Joshua Block, a senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” Block said. The Supreme Court will hear the cases during the term beginning in October and issue a ruling next year.
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