The Supreme Court rules that bans on transgender student-athletes are lawful
This was decided by the US Supreme Court, which upheld the laws of Idaho and West Virginia and overturned previous rulings by lower courts.
US states will be able to ban transgender student-athletes from taking part in sporting events. This was decided by the US Supreme Court, upholding the laws of Idaho and West Virginia and overturning previous rulings by lower courts.
They had, in fact, taken a stand in support of the transgender students who had challenged the bans in the two states. The students who challenged the measures argued that they constituted discrimination based on a person’s sex or transgender status, in breach of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law, as well as Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in education ‘on the basis of sex’.
Conservative judges have expressed concerns about imposing a uniform national standard, given the disagreement and uncertainty as to whether drugs such as puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy eliminate male physiological advantages in sport.
The possibility of receiving such treatments was undermined by the Supreme Court itself last year, with a ruling that allowed states to ban them for people under the age of 18 who suffer from gender dysphoria (that is, who suffer from significant, clinically diagnosed distress arising from a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth).
The Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority of 6 to 3, has already approved other restrictions on transgender people, allowing President Donald Trump to exclude them from the armed forces and preventing them from selecting the gender on their passport that reflects their gender identity.
