U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Bans On Trans Athletes In School Sports

The U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion released Tuesday, voted 6-3 in support of two state laws that ban trans girls and women from playing women’s sports at public schools and universities. The ruling applies directly to bans in two states—Idaho and West Virginia—while bolstering similar bans in more than two dozen others.

Writing for the three votes against—all of which came from the court’s liberal wing—Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that to the court’s majority “the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”

“Sports, of course, are often zero sum,” Sotomayor wrote, “but the law need not and should not be.”