How the US supreme court case on trans athletes could unravel LGBTQ+ rights – US Supreme Court – The Guardian

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How the US supreme court case on trans athletes could unravel LGBTQ+ rights

By Sam Levin in Los Angeles

If bans on trans youth athletes are upheld, more girls could face ‘invasive sex testing’ and trans people could broadly lose civil rights protectionsMon 12 Jan 2026 07.00 EST

The US supreme court will consider state bans on transgender athletes on Tuesday in a major LGBTQ+ rights legal battle that could have far-reaching consequences beyond youth sports.

The court is hearing oral arguments in two cases brought by trans students who challenged Republican-backed laws in West Virginia and Idaho prohibiting trans girls from participating in girls’ athletic programs.

Those bans were both previously blocked by federal courts, but the states appealed to the supreme court, which is hearing a case on trans people’s access to sports for the first time. If the court’s conservative supermajority sides with the states and upholds the bans, the rulings could have significant ripple effects, paving the way for the enforcement of a range of anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

If the rulings are broad, civil rights advocates warn, the supreme court could make it easier for lawmakers and school officials to ban trans students’ access to appropriate bathrooms and facilities, restrict LGBTQ+ youth’s ability to use chosen names and pronouns, enforce strict dress codes, limit protections against anti-LGBTQ+ harassment, and further deny access to accurate identification documents.

“It’s really scary. The supreme court is poised to tell us whether dislike and moral disapproval of a specific group can be a real basis to make law,” said Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights group.

‘This isn’t just about me’

In Little v Hecox, Lindsay Hecox, a trans college student, challenged Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law categorically banning trans women and girls from women’s sports teams, which passed in 2020, blocking her from track at age 19. She has since sought to have the case dismissed, arguing she is no longer pursuing sports and doesn’t want to be subjected to ongoing harassment. But the court decided to hear the case, anyway.

In the second case, West Virginia v BPJ, 15-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson has challenged her state’s law banning her track participation, saying in a recent statement: “This case isn’t just about me, or even just about sports. It’s just one part of a plan to push transgender people like me out of public life entirely.”

In the last five years, 27 states have restricted trans children and teens’ access to school sports – most targeting trans girls, but some applying to all trans youth.

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