Supreme Court hears arguments in landmark transgender athletes’ cases. | The Excerpt

On the Wednesday, January 14, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: The Supreme Court heard arguments for two landmark transgender athlete cases on Tuesday brought by transgender women contesting the legality of their state’s ban on transgender female athletes. USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe joins The Excerpt to share her analysis.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

The Supreme Court heard arguments for two landmark transgender athlete cases on Tuesday, one based in West Virginia and one in Idaho, both of which were brought by transgender women contesting the legality of their state's ban on transgender female athletes. The cases could have broad ramifications for the rights of transgenders in the US.

Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 14th, 2026. Joining me now to discuss the arguments and also how the Court responded is USA TODAY's Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe. Thank you so much for coming on, Maureen.

Maureen Groppe:

Oh, thanks for having me on.

Dana Taylor:

These two cases took a long time to reach the Supreme Court. In fact, Idaho and West Virginia both fielded petitions to have the Court review lower court's rulings in July of 2024, but the Supreme Court didn't grant those petitions until after its June 2025 decision in US versus Skrmetti. Why? And what was that case about?

Maureen Groppe:

So the previous case was about state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. In other words, whether states could prevent minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapy. And in that decision, the Court said that the bans are constitutional because they turn on someone's age and type of medical treatment, then they were not discriminating on the basis of their sex and on whether someone is transgender.

The case though was decided what we call narrowly, so it was just on that particular issue of gender-affirming care. They could have written the case more broadly in ways that would have decided other types of situations such as these transgender athlete bans, but they didn't. They just kept a narrow focus on that. And then now they turned to this specific case, whether another area of law is affecting people who are transgender.

Dana Taylor:

Maureen, can you please describe the two cases at the heart of yesterday's hearing?

Maureen Groppe:

So there were two issues that the Court was asked to decide about whether these state bans are legal. One is whether they violate the Constitution's equal protection clause, and that's the same issue that was at the heart of the gender-affirming care case from Tennessee last year.

The other issue is whether they also violate Title IX, and that's the section of a civil rights law that bars sex discrimination in educational programs. Lawyers for the students argue that the bans discriminated against them on the basis of both sex and transgender status, and that that can't be justified in their cases because the laws don't take into account whether someone who has blocked typical male puberty, for example, still has a physical advantage.

The lawyers for Idaho and West Virginia who are defending their laws, they argued that transgender women retain advantages even after they've had hormonal treatments such as puberty blockers and receiving estrogen so that they can be treated differently under the law.

Dana Taylor:

One of the plaintiffs here, Hecox, in Idaho, has asked the judges to drop her case. Why was that and how did the Court respond?

Maureen Groppe:

So Lindsay Hecox, she's a college student in Idaho. She never played competitive sports at school because she failed to make the cut for her college's cross country and track teams. Instead, she played what her lawyers called no-cut team sports in soccer and track. But she stopped participating in sports this year, which is her senior year. And she wanted to dismiss her challenge to give the other side a win saying, "I'm not challenging your law anymore as it applies to me. I'm not going to play sports anymore. I'm never going to play sports and try to challenge this law again." And she did so because she told the Supreme Court that she's afraid continuing with her case will subject her to harassment and that'll make it harder for graduating, and that's what she wants to focus on right now. And she also said that there's increased intolerance for transgender women who participate in sports.

She made that argument to the Court in the fall. Idaho opposed her petition, even though that would've given them a win. It would've given them a win without a decision from the Supreme Court saying, "Yeah, you are right on your legal arguments." And that's the way they want to win this case. So they said she shouldn't be able to withdraw at this late stage in the game. And the Court said they were going to wait until after the oral arguments to decide whether or not her case can continue.

Dana Taylor:

Maureen, did the justices appear to be persuaded by either side?

Maureen Groppe:

So the Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. There are six justices who are appointed by Republicans and three by Democrats. They were sympathetic to the students' arguments that these laws are categorical bans. And so people like these two students should get their chance in court to argue for why the laws shouldn't apply to their particular case and look at the evidence about whether or not they retain any physical advantages after going through medical treatment.

But the six conservatives, a majority of them seemed not persuaded by that argument. They seemed more sympathetic to the argument from the states that, look, these laws are meant to protect women in sports, and the way they do so by saying that you can't participate on a female sports team if you were designated male at birth, that rule is going to make sense in 99% of the cases. And so that's good enough. The law doesn't have to be fair in 100% of the cases to students to whom it would apply, and so it seems like the majority of the Court is going to allow these bans to stay into effect.

Dana Taylor:

President Trump made banning transgender athletes a cornerstone of his election campaign and signed a ban into law via executive order on February 5th of 2025. Does that order have any bearing on the cases in Idaho and West Virginia?

Maureen Groppe:

So his executive order is one reason that the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to let it participate in the oral arguments. And a lawyer from the Justice Department did so in both cases arguing on behalf of Idaho's and West Virginia's bans.

One thing that the lawyer was asked about is whether his logic would extend to the Trump administration's executive order in the sense that the states are saying that they are allowed to impose these bans. In the Justice Department's executive order, the issue is whether states are required to have these bans because the Trump administration is trying to withhold federal funding from states that do not have bans like this. And one of the liberal justices, Justice Elena Kagan, she tried to focus on how can they do it in a way that still would allow states that don't want to have these bans to challenge the administration's executive order that would require them to have the bans.

Dana Taylor:

Maureen, what has the Supreme Court said in the past about transgender rights? Are there any recent rulings that give us a hint as to which way the justices are leaning?

Maureen Groppe:

Well, the transgender rights community got a huge win in 2020. The Supreme Court surprised a lot of people by ruling that a civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, that applies to gay and transgender people. But since then, the Court has been ruling the other way, including, as in the case I mentioned from last year about banning gender-affirming care for minors.

And then in the fall, the Court heard a challenge to a law in Colorado that bans what's called conversion therapy, which is an attempt to change someone's sexual orientation or their gender identity. And it sounded like the Court was going to strike down laws like that, which is in not just Colorado, but a number of other states as well. So that would be another loss for the LGBTQ community if that happens. And we should get a decision on that, as we will in this case, by the end of June or early July.

Dana Taylor:

The issue of transgender athletes has definitely become a staple of the so-called culture wars here in the US. How many states will be impacted by this ruling?

Maureen Groppe:

There are 27 states, including Idaho and West Virginia, that bar transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams. The rest of the states, they either have laws prohibiting such bans or they haven't taken a position on the issue.

Dana Taylor:

How many people could be impacted by the higher court's ruling here?

Maureen Groppe:

One of the big issues in the case was whether there is a major issue out there with transgender athletes competing on female sports teams. The students who are challenging the ban say there are very few students who this would apply to, in this case this problem is being made out to be bigger than it is. The other side says that it's not just the transgender students who are affected, so you can't say it just affects, for example, the one student in West Virginia who is challenging this because it also affects all the other students she is competing against and might beat or might take a slot on a team.

But in terms of how many transgender athletes there are, there are no definitive statistics on that. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, that's a think tank that researches these types of issues, they have estimated that as many as 122,000 transgender youth could be participating in high school level team athletics, and that at the college level, less than 1.5% of student athletes are probably transgender.

Dana Taylor:

Maureen Groppe is USA TODAY's Supreme Court Correspondent. It's always a pleasure to have you on this show. Thank you so much, Maureen.

Maureen Groppe:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.