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On June 30—the last day of the term and the final day of Pride Month—the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling that states may ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports, holding that Title IX permits schools to determine eligibility based on “biological sex.” The ruling, authored by Justice Kavanaugh, was narrower than some of the worst-case scenarios: it preserved Bostock, did not overtly strip transgender people of equal protection, and explicitly declined to decide whether states must exclude trans athletes. But its most consequential holding still has vast consequences. The Court declared that “sex” in Title IX “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex”—a definitional ruling about the statute itself, not merely about sports. And though the majority deliberately avoided saying that blue states must discriminate against transgender people under Title IX, its holding leaves wide lanes for the Trump administration to pressure schools and colleges through funding threats and investigations, and for far-right organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom to file lawsuits targeting trans-inclusive policies in every state in the country.

The decision split along ideological lines, with all six conservative justices in the majority and the three liberal justices dissenting on equal protection. The majority declared directly, “The term ‘sex’ in Title IX, the Javits Amendment, and the Title IX regulations cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.” This ruling overturns years of lower court precedent. The Fourth Circuit, in Grimm v. Gloucester County, had held that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination protects transgender students’ right to use bathrooms and play sports matching their gender identity. The Seventh Circuit, in Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District, reached the same conclusion. Those rulings—and the logic underlying them—were foundational to school policies across the country protecting transgender students in both red and blue states.

The ruling was not as sweeping as it could have been. The Court specified two important limiting principles. First, the majority explicitly stated that it was not deciding whether states that choose to allow transgender athletes to participate are in violation of Title IX—noting that “that question is currently the subject of litigation in some lower courts” and that “nothing in this opinion is intended to decide that question.” This preserves, at least for now, the legal space for inclusive states to maintain their own policies. Second, the Court declined to resolve whether transgender people as a class are entitled to heightened constitutional protection under the Equal Protection Clause. This was one of the potential worst-case scenarios—a ruling on those grounds could have greenlit virtually any law targeting transgender people by declaring them undeserving of equal protection. Instead, the Court analyzed the sports bans as sex-based classifications subject to intermediate scrutiny, and found they satisfied that standard.

Ultimately, though, the impact of this ruling will likely be severe. The most immediate consequence is that states across the country now have clear Supreme Court authorization to enact education-based bathroom and sports bans targeting transgender students, with Title IX posing no barrier. But the damage will not be confined to red states. The Court gave a wide lane for lawsuits against schools and colleges in blue states that allow transgender athletes to participate. Though the majority deliberately avoided ruling on whether inclusive states are violating Title IX, it heavily endorsed the theory that even a single transgender athlete on a girls’ team “displaces” cisgender athletes—devoting an entire passage to the zero-sum nature of sports, writing that “every athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another athlete” and “every competitor who wins a race or competition deprives another athlete of that victory, or medal, or prize.” That displacement framework is the foundational legal theory behind ADF’s lawsuits in Minnesota and other states, and it is central to the Trump administration’s Title IX enforcement campaign against schools that include trans athletes. The Court did not adopt ADF’s argument that Title IX requires exclusion. But it endorsed the factual premise on which that argument rests—and in litigation, the premise is often all you need.

A more likely and immediate impact of this ruling, though, is the ratcheting up of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against colleges, universities, and public school districts to capitulate to its anti-trans demands. Prior to the ruling, the administration conducted rushed Title IX investigations, finding school districts and universities across the country in violation of Title IX unless they voluntarily enacted bathroom bans, sports bans, dormitory restrictions, and more. Most of these institutions pointed to circuit court Title IX precedent requiring them not to discriminate as their shield against capitulation—telling the administration, in effect, that federal law compelled them to include trans students, not exclude them. That shield is now gone. And while institutions could still point to the Equal Protection Clause, the Court limited that avenue as well: the majority held that sex-based classifications satisfying even a general relationship to the state’s interests are constitutional, eliminated the ability of individual plaintiffs to bring as-applied challenges showing a classification doesn’t fit them, and declared that even if the factual premise underlying a ban is wrong—even if trans athletes on puberty blockers have no physical advantage—the ban survives anyway.

“This ruling is deeply harmful for transgender women and girls who only asked for the ability to participate in sports with their peers,” said Sasha Buchert, Senior Attorney and Director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project, Lambda Legal. “Countless studies have demonstrated the myriad benefits that come with participation in team sports. Now, one population, transgender youth and collegians, are targeted for specific and baseless discrimination. We will not be deterred and will continue to fight back to secure the equal participation that all youth, including transgender youth, deserve.”

You can read the full ruling here:

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