The Supreme Court Says Girls’ Sports Can Still Be For Girls

The Court says states may preserve girls’ sports for girls. California still chooses ideology over the very women Title IX was designed to protect.

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🕒 8-minute read

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A Supreme Court Ruling That Should Not Have Been Necessary

For most of American history, the question would have sounded absurd: Can states reserve girls’ sports for girls? Not whether schools should offer opportunities for female athletes. Not whether girls deserved teams, scholarships, records, and championships of their own. Simply, whether a girls’ team could be limited to girls.

Yet by the closing days of this Supreme Court term, that question was before the highest court in the country.

In cases outside of Idaho and West Virginia, the Court held that states may preserve separate athletic categories based on biological sex without violating either Title IX or the Constitution. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from portions of the constitutional analysis.

The most important sentence in the opinion may also have been the simplest:

“Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex.”

That matters because Americans spent years being told the opposite.

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The rest of this column is below the paywall. What paid subscribers will see below:

• What Congress thought it was protecting

• Why biology still matters

• California’s choice

• Parents, government, and reality

• The larger fight over truth