Nine justices. Zero dissents on Title IX. The Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools does not — and never did — require letting biological males compete in girls' sports.
The constitutional question split 6-3. The Title IX question didn't split at all.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, and he didn't mince words. "The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women's and girls' sports throughout America," Kavanaugh wrote. He added what anyone who's watched a track meet already knows: "Sports are highly competitive and generally zero sum. At almost every turn, someone wins and someone loses."
The cases came from West Virginia and Idaho. Becky Pepper Jackson, a 15-year-old biological male competing in girls' shot put and discus in West Virginia, and Lindsay Hecox, a biological male running track and cross-country at Boise State University in Idaho, both challenged their states' bans on transgender athletes in women's sports. Twenty-seven states now have similar bans on the books.
The 6-3 split on the 14th Amendment question was expected. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, arguing the Court should have allowed more fact-finding and claiming that transgender athletes who never experienced male puberty might lack athletic advantages. She wrote that the ruling "inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires."
But here's the part that matters most. On the Title IX question — the one activists spent years insisting was settled in their favor — Sotomayor agreed with the conservatives. So did Justice Elena Kagan. So did Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. All three liberal justices concurred that Title IX, the 1972 landmark civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in federally funded education, does not protect transgender athletes' right to compete on opposite-sex teams.
Josh Block, senior counsel at the ACLU, called the outcome "very disappointing" for transgender athletes seeking equal participation. The ACLU had backed both challenges.
President Trump posted his reaction in his usual understated fashion: "BIG WIN: The United States Supreme Court just RULED AGAINST MEN PLAYING IN WOMEN'S SPORTS."
For years, we were told that opposing biological males in girls' locker rooms and on girls' podiums was bigotry. That the law was clear. That Title IX actually required schools to let them compete. Entire university departments produced papers explaining why we were wrong. Media panels nodded along.
Twenty-one states still allow transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their gender identity. Those policies are now on an island — legally defensible, perhaps, but no longer backed by the argument that federal law demands it.
The "settled law" argument went 0-for-9. The court that gave us Bostock — the 2020 ruling extending workplace protections to transgender employees — just drew a hard line at the gymnasium door. As Kavanaugh noted, athletic competition involves a "very different statutory and factual context" than the workplace.
When all nine justices agree that a law doesn't say what activists spent a decade claiming it said, the question isn't whether the ruling was right. It's how the claim survived as long as it did.
