The Supreme Court is expected to hear a highly anticipated case on transgender athletes Tuesday in a decision whose impact could extend beyond sports to redefine the 1972 Title IX law guaranteeing sex-based equality in education. 

The court has combined two cases from Idaho and West Virginia, whose attorneys general are appealing lower court decisions in favor of transgender students who claim they were discriminated against by being denied a spot on female sports teams because they didn’t biologically start out that way.

In the first case, student and cross-country runner Lindsay Hecox, who attended Boise State University, challenged Idaho’s 2020 law barring males who identify as female from playing on female sports teams, saying it violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The second case challenges an appeals court decision won by 15-year-old shot-putter Becky Pepper-Jackson, who says West Virginia’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports violates Title IX’s ban on sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools. 

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch will be closely watched during Tuesday’s arguments as both voted in 2020 on a Title VII case that struck down discrimination against transsexuals in the workplace. Supporters for the respondents are hoping for a repeat of their 2025 decision.

However, opponents of transgender students in sports say the latest case is unlike the Title VII decision because it deals specifically with the physical attributes of sex. They also point to more recent rulings involving the two justices, who in June upheld state bans on gender transition care for minors and opt-out clauses for Maryland parents who did not want their children exposed to LGBTQ+-themed books.

The court’s decision could impact laws in 27 states restricting transgender students from participating on sports teams. West Virginia’s attorney general, J.B. McCuskey, said his state’s law, titled the Sports Act, was designed to reinforce Title IX opportunities for women to compete in sports.

“Sex is what matters when it comes to sports. Gender identity does not. Both Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause make room for this common-sense lawmaking. Title IX permits states to separate athletic teams based on biological sex. The Equal Protection Clause is much the same. The Sports Act is constitutional because it promotes fairness and safety in women’s sports,” he said in a statement ahead of the hearing.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which will be presenting oral arguments on behalf of female student athletes challenging the right of biological males to compete alongside them, says permitting transgender athletes on female teams extends inequality beyond the playing fields.

“Allowing males into female-only spaces erases the privacy and safety those spaces were built to protect,” the alliance wrote in a post featuring a West Virginia athlete named Adaleia, who said she and her teammates had a buddy system for going into the locker room in middle school because “it is not normal for a middle school-age girl to change in front of a male student. It is not normal to try to force that on them.”

But women’s rights groups defending transgender athletes say that a decision to uphold the state laws undermines Title IX.

“Title IX was always intended to remedy discrimination rooted in pernicious sex stereotyping — particularly the notion that cisgender girls and women are athletically inferior to cisgender boys and men,” wrote the National Women’s Law Center, which authored an amicus brief for the respondents. “Sports bans, like the ones being challenged, reinforce the same stereotypes that women and girls have been fighting against for decades because they impede progress towards gender equity in athletics.”