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The Supreme Court will hear trans sports ban cases, which could spell doom for trans rights
- Faefyx Collington, LGBTQ Nation
- Jul 8
- 6 min read
The conservative Court will have to decide if trans women are legally women. This could lead to segregation for trans people.
The Supreme Court just announced that it would hear two cases related to trans women participating in sports. This will likely lead to the Court declaring whether or not it is constitutional to ban trans people from sports. If the Court rules that state or federal level restrictions on trans people playing sports in school can stand, it paves the way for the introduction of policies that will create an era of “separate but equal” segregation. We have to find a fresh way to fight back before we get there.
Crucially, this case won’t just be about sports bans: starting with sports bans is all part of the othering process. Recently, Simone Biles called out Riley Gaines for her transphobia. That’s great, but in doing so, she threw out some ideas for solving concerns around trans people in sports: “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!!” That amounts to an ally suggesting we lean into the “separate but equal” thinking that was used against African Americans, and it’s all too likely to be what comes out of this new case.
Since anti-trans sports bans started to be pushed through, we’ve seen a decline in support for trans people in sports, and that’s naturally going to lead to a worse public opinion of us overall. That’s reflected in Democrats from Colin Allred to Gavin Newsom jumping ship on the trans athletics issue.
Banning trans people from participating in sports on the team of their correct gender is a way of excluding them from a major part of society, and we know that such efforts won’t stop there. The Court’s Skrmetti ruling last month already gave us a good idea of which way the Court will rule on this. If they declare that trans women can be excluded from women’s sports, the bigotry won’t be hidden behind questions around healthcare or “think of the children” pearl clutching; it will be a statement that trans women are not legally considered to be women, a political move to back the discriminatory executive order from January.
We saw something similar to this happen in the United Kingdom earlier this year, and looking at that can help us to see how the situation might play out here. The U.K. Supreme Court was considering a case brought against the Scottish government after the Scottish government declared that a trans woman with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) should have access to women-only services and facilities and that trans women were considered to be women for the purposes of quotas. That court ruled that for the purposes of the U.K.’s Equality Act, which governs those rights and quotas, gender was defined by “biological sex,” a term they defined in a way that excluded trans people.
While the U.K. Supreme Court suggested that trans people still had protections from discrimination, that single ruling declaring that trans women are not legally women had wider impacts. Questions have been raised about legal structures already in place: what is a GRC for if it doesn’t certify your gender post-transition? And it has left trans people unsure of what facilities they can legally use and how they can participate in society safely across the country.
While the Skrmetti ruling tried to claim that it dealt with a medical diagnosis rather than trans people specifically, when it comes to these trans athletes, the decision won’t play out that way. They are going to have to declare that trans women either are or are not women for the sake of participation in sports, and that ruling will be used to examine other cases and serve as precedent. The conservative justices have already shown that they want to expand their ruling beyond the Skrmetti case and have called for cases to be reopened, even ones that weren’t directly touched by the ruling.
As those on the right work to remove trans people and those who don’t fit traditional gender roles from society by denying them healthcare, bathroom access, and sports participation, we get closer to segregation. We already have to jump through additional hoops to be part of our own society, and it only takes someone trying to find a compromise to take us the rest of the way, even someone well-meaning like Biles.
If the Court supports laws that prevent trans people from playing on teams with cis people, it won’t just be harking back to segregation; it will be using its playbook. Across the American South, during segregation, there were laws passed to prevent a Black person from playing on a white team.
With sports in school at stake, it’s worth noting that sports are a part of an educational experience that will be denied to trans youths. Sports aren’t taught in school just to get kids to run off some energy; they’re designed to teach dedication, discipline, and teamwork. A ruling from the Supreme Court might say that to avoid full-on discrimination, a separate trans category can be used, as Biles suggested, but schools are unlikely to work to maintain that, especially in the current climate. Equally, a ruling that trans youths can compete, but might be in the category matching their sex assigned at birth, would be tantamount to a ban, as many would rather not play than go through the pain of competing under the wrong heading.
The element that makes this case so dangerous to the trans community is that sports participation has become the new hot-button issue, beating out bathroom bans and healthcare restrictions. Even Democrats are hesitating on the matter, breaking ranks to question the party line of supporting trans people. The right has been pushing propaganda about what trans people participating in sports means for a long time now, and those who aren’t already aware of the nuances and intricacies of trans identities and healthcare are easy targets for that propaganda.
Many of us understand much of the science involved here: we know what hormones do normally, we know how puberty plays a role in our bodies, and we know what HRT does to athletic ability. Having explained this stuff to people for years, it’s easy to fall into a habit of issuing blanket statements about the facts without giving others the space to learn.
But for many people in the United States, the first time they heard about trans people was when the current president started spouting lies about us during his campaign. Simply responding to those lies with “it’s fine, don’t worry about it,” sadly, isn’t enough. Back in November, Charlamagne tha God suggested that it was “legitimate” to debate gender-affirming care for youths and complained that he was shut down as transphobic for questioning it. He regularly guest hosts The Daily Show and supports transition in general, but was touted on Fox News because he expressed concerns about under-18s making such big decisions: concerns that would likely have been assuaged by someone giving him an explanation of puberty blockers.
That is not to say in any way that we need to back off on these issues or do anything but fight tooth and nail for our rights. If we back off on pushing for any element of trans rights, it will lead to a cascading effect, and we can already see how the Supreme Court is trying to make that happen. But we do perhaps need to reexamine how we lead that fight and approach potential allies who have spoken from a position of concerned ignorance.
We need a fresh tactic that finds ways to explain that there are concrete biological differences between trans women and cis men, ways to explain to the average person (and the hesitant Democratic politician) that trans women belong in women’s sports, and we have to find ways to engage people with the science that supports all of this.
MAGA Republicans are always happy to shout about things without providing any support for their claims. Democrats need to work to base their arguments on facts and studies. We have all of that evidence. We need to make it digestible for all, and we need to make it clear that denying the gender of a trans person is only ever about bigotry, ignorance, and using us as political pawns, not about science. The alternative is that Republican propaganda will keep winning the day, more Democrats will hesitate to fight for trans rights, and the Supreme Court will usher in a new age of segregation, now targeted at trans people.
(c) 2025, LGBTQ Nation
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