US Supreme Court to decide legality of state transgender sports bans

WASHINGTON, June 30 : The U.S. Supreme Court is set on Tuesday to decide the legality of state laws in West Virginia and Idaho banning transgender student athletes from female sports teams at public schools including universities, a contentious issue enmeshed in the nation's culture wars.

Lower courts sided with transgender students who challenged the bans as violating the U.S. Constitution and a federal anti-discrimination law.

Tuesday is the final day of rulings for the court's current term, which began in October.

The Idaho and West Virginia laws designate sports teams at public schools including universities according to "biological sex" and bar "students of the male sex" from female teams. Twenty-five other states have similar laws on the books. 

Republican President Donald Trump's administration, which has cracked down on transgender rights, has backed the states in the litigation. 

Idaho and West Virginia said the laws preserve fair and safe competition for women and girls, while critics see the measures as part of a broader assault on the rights of transgender Americans.

The students who challenged the measures said they discriminate based on a person's sex or status as transgender in violation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights statute that bars discrimination in education "on the basis of sex."

MAJOR 2025 RULING

In another major transgender rights ruling, the Supreme Court in a case from Tennessee last year let states ban medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria. That term refers to the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence