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Alignment is each justice's general judicial philosophy as commonly described, not a party. Justices don't belong to parties, and they don't always vote with their bloc.
Alignment is each justice's general judicial philosophy as commonly described, not a party. Justices don't belong to parties, and they don't always vote with their bloc.
No. 24-43 · October Term 2025
Does Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause prohibit a state from assigning students to girls’ and boys’ sports teams based on their biological sex as determined at birth?
B.P.J. is a transgender girl who has identified as female since the third grade. At the onset of puberty, B.P.J. began taking puberty blockers and estrogen for medical treatment of gender dysphoria, effectively halting male pubertal development and aligning her physical characteristics with those of cisgender girls. Since her social transition, B.P.J. has consistently lived as a girl at school and participated on girls’ athletic teams. In 2021, West Virginia enacted the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which requires public school and collegiate sports teams to be designated based on “biological sex” and excludes individuals identified as male at birth from participating on female teams. This law, by its design and effect, prevented B.P.J. from continuing to compete on her school’s girls’ cross-country and track teams. Shortly after the Act took effect, B.P.J., through her mother, sued the West Virginia State Board of Education and other state and county education officials, as well as the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission. She alleged that excluding her from girls’ sports violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX. The State of West Virginia intervened to…
From Oyez.
Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex; West Virginia and Idaho did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by maintaining female sports teams for biological females.
Majority: Brett M. Kavanaugh, John G. Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett
Dissent: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson