Richie Diesterheft / Wikimedia Commons
Why It Matters
Idaho has been at the center of one of the most closely watched sports policy disputes in the country for the past six years. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the final day of its 2025-26 term puts Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act on firm constitutional ground and clears the way for the 26 other states that followed Idaho’s lead to enforce similar laws without legal challenge.
What Happened
The Supreme Court upheld state laws barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, ending a legal fight that began when Idaho became the first state in the nation to pass such a ban back in 2020. The ruling, spanning 77 pages of opinions, was handed down Tuesday.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a partial dissent, co-signed by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.
“May schools determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sport based on biological sex?” Kavanaugh wrote. “The answer is yes.”
The case consolidated challenges to Idaho’s law and a 2021 West Virginia law. Transgender student-athlete B.P.J. had sued West Virginia, arguing both laws violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. A separate challenge to Idaho’s law was brought by Boise State student Lindsay Hecox, though Hecox moved to drop her case in September after deciding not to pursue participation in collegiate athletics.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little was named as a defendant in the Supreme Court proceedings, and Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s legal team argued before the justices roughly five months before the ruling was issued.
Background on Idaho’s Law
The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act was sponsored by Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a Republican from Idaho Falls and former collegiate women’s basketball coach. When Idaho enacted the measure in 2020, it was immediately met with legal challenges that worked their way through the federal courts for years before reaching the nation’s highest court.
Ehardt was direct in her response to Tuesday’s decision, saying women had long been told they didn’t matter and that the ruling represented a definitive win for women in sports.
“Today, we have finally, definitively won this war for women in sports,” Ehardt said in a statement following the ruling.
By the Numbers
- 2020: Idaho became the first state to pass a transgender athletics ban
- 26 states passed similar legislation in the years that followed
- 6 years of litigation preceded the Supreme Court’s final ruling
- 77 pages of majority opinion, concurrences, and dissents
- 6-3 ideological split in the majority, with three liberal justices dissenting in part
Zoom Out
The ruling settles one of the more contested legal questions in amateur athletics policy and delivers a significant win for states across the Mountain West and beyond that modeled their legislation on Idaho’s original law. With nearly half the states in the country having enacted some form of transgender sports restriction, the decision removes the primary legal obstacle those states faced.
The outcome also arrives during a term in which the Supreme Court has issued several rulings with broad implications for federal and state authority. Earlier this term, the court expanded presidential firing power over federal agencies and struck down Hawaii’s default gun ban on private property, reinforcing a pattern of decisions that have generally favored state and executive authority over regulatory and administrative expansion.
What’s Next
With the Supreme Court’s term now concluded and Idaho’s law upheld, school districts and athletic associations across the 27 states with similar bans can enforce their policies without the threat of ongoing federal litigation. Legal observers anticipate the ruling will effectively end lower-court challenges that had kept enforcement uncertain in several states pending the high court’s resolution of the core constitutional questions.
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