Supreme Court hears arguments in landmark transgender athletes’ cases.
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
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🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
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. USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe joins The Excerpt to share her analysis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Supreme Court heard arguments for two landmark transgender athlete cases on Tuesday, |
| 0:10.4 | one based in West Virginia and one in Idaho, both of which were brought by transgender women |
| 0:16.1 | contesting the legality of their state's ban on transgender female athletes. The cases could have broad |
| 0:22.9 | ramifications for the rights of transgender in the U.S. Hello, and welcome to USA Today's |
| 0:32.8 | The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 14th, 2026. Joining me now to discuss the arguments |
| 0:40.4 | and also how the court responded is USA Today's Supreme Court correspondent, Maureen Grappie. |
| 0:46.4 | Thank you so much for coming on, Maureen. Oh, thanks for having me on. These two cases |
| 0:50.5 | took a long time to reach the Supreme Court. In fact, Idaho and West Virginia both |
| 0:56.4 | fielded petitions to have the court review lower court's rulings in July of 2024, but the |
| 1:02.9 | Supreme Court didn't grant those petitions until after its June 2025 decision in U.S. versus |
| 1:10.1 | Grimetti. Why? And what was that case about? |
| 1:14.5 | So the previous case was about state bans on gender affirming care for transgender minors. |
| 1:20.1 | In other words, whether states could prevent minors from getting puity blockers and hormone therapy. |
| 1:25.2 | And in that decision, the court said that the bans are constitutional because |
| 1:28.7 | they turn on someone's age and type of medical treatment, then they were not discriminating |
| 1:33.0 | on the basis of their sex and on whether someone is transgender. The case, though, was decided |
| 1:38.7 | what we call nearly. 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. |
| 1:52.9 | They just kept a narrow focus on that. |
| 1:55.1 | And then now they turned to this specific case, whether another area of laws affecting people who are transgender. |
| 2:03.0 | Maureen, can you please describe the two cases at the heart of yesterday's hearing? |
| 2:08.1 | So there were two issues that the court was asked to decide about whether these state bans are legal. |
| 2:14.2 | One is whether they violate the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, and that's the same |
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