WASHINGTON D.C. – The Supreme Court’s ruling today in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B. P. J. allows states to ban transgender women and girls from playing on women and girls school sports teams, holding that such bans do not violate their constitutional protections and Title IX rights. However, the decision does not address the lawfulness of state laws that allow or require trans participation in women and girls’ sports, meaning that schools and states with existing inclusive policies and laws are still legally allowed to keep those policies.

“Today’s decision is a devastating setback for the promise of Title IX and for the fundamental principle that all students deserve equal opportunity,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). “By allowing these states to exclude transgender women and girls like Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox from school sports, the court has endorsed discrimination and reinforced the same stereotypes that Title IX was designed to dismantle. 

“This ruling failed to provide the clear constitutional and Title IX protections that students deserve, including transgender women and girls, which leaves the rights of transgender student athletes vulnerable to a patchwork of discriminatory state laws. This ruling not only harms those transgender athletes, but threatens the progress that generations of women and girls fought to enact.”

“While this decision allows states to continue enforcing harmful bans, it also affirms that Title IX does not federally require the exclusion of trans athletes. This means that states with trans-inclusive policies are in compliance with Title IX, affirming that the Trump administration’s attacks on schools that welcome trans student athletes have no basis in law,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at NWLC. “The Trump administration cannot just rewrite civil rights law with the stroke of a pen. We will always show up in support of trans and nonbinary students because conservative extremists will never legislate them out of existence.”  

In November, 2025, NWLC filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in B.P.J v. West Virginia and Little V. Hecox, affirming that Title IX was created to remedy discrimination rooted in sex stereotyping, and was never intended to be weaponized against transgender individuals.