WASHINGTON D.C. ~ Conservatives were handed a victory in a major Supreme Court decision Tuesday, ruling in favor of states banning transgender women from participating in publicly funded school sports for women.
The justices took on cases from Idaho and West Virginia filed by two trans athletes, who all decided that the laws do not violate Title IX, a law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation in public schools. However, the court was 6-3 between the conservative and liberal judges on whether the laws violated the Equal Protection Clause, with the conservative justices saying that they do not.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority’s decision that “Allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the court should “demand exercising judicial restraint, not rushing to answer conclusively difficult questions without sufficient evidentiary development.”
The decision upholds similar laws from 25 other states.
The debate over trans women in women’s sports stems from the argument that trans woman hold “biological” advantages over their cisgender colleagues. The British Journal of Sports Medicine published a paper in February titled “Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis,” which argued against this point. It concluded that “While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender (women).”
The court’s decision is another made since President Donald Trump took office that dealt a blow to transgender rights in the U.S. Last year, the court decided that states can ban trans youth from recieving gender affiorming care.
