WASHINGTON — Delivering another major blow to LGBTQ rights, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls' and women's sports.Limited time: Save 25% on NBC News subscriptionGet exclusive reporting, live Q&As and ad-free reading.The court, largely divided 6-3, ruled against two transgender students, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, who had challenged restrictive laws in the states of West Virginia and Idaho, respectively.The court in an opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh concluded that the laws do not violate either the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the law apply evenly to everyone, or Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in education.Although the ruling directly concerns only West Virginia and Idaho, it is likely to affect 25 other states with similar bans.It is the latest in a string of defeats for transgender people at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.Last year, the court upheld state laws that ban gender transition treatments for transgender youth.Earlier this year, the court ruled in favor of parents who object to California policies aimed at protecting transgender students.
And the court in two decisions last year allowed Trump administration policies that bar transgender people from the military and prevent them from including their gender identity on passports.In an earlier ruling in 2020 that seems to increasingly appear to be an outlier, the court surprisingly ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment, applies to gender identity as well as sexual orientation.Pepper-Jackson, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, has taken puberty-blocking medication and estrogen and competed in girls' cross-country, shot put and discus.Hecox, a 25-year-old college student, has received testosterone suppression and estrogen treatments.She t...