This one seems like a no-brainer, but of course because of politics it’s not.

This is the ruling:

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can bar transgender female competitors from playing girls’ sports in a landmark decision with major implications for more than half the country, where such policies are in place.

In a 6-3 opinion, the high court determined that neither Idaho nor West Virginia had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with their bans, as well as that Title IX allowed states to separate sports teams on the basis of biological sex.

What is interesting, though, is that even the three liberal justices weren’t completely onboard with not allowing states to ban trans athletes playing in girls’ sports. They thought states could ban the practice, but only for narrow reasons:

The three liberal justices would have allowed the states to proceed with their bans under a much narrower legal rationale that would have left the laws more susceptible to future challenges.

“West Virginia may well have satisfied its burden and seen its ban upheld. The point, rather, is that this Court’s equal protection precedents require a very different approach … than the one the majority follows today,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. …

The liberals contended that the high court should have just stuck with West Virginia plaintiff Becky Pepper-Jackson’s concession that “sex” under the Title IX statute means “biological sex” assigned at birth, and not decided the constitutional question.

The article states that 27 states have similar bans. It also states this, which I believe is incorrect:

In West Virginia, Pepper-Jackson’s mother fought against the state’s Save Women’s Sports Act after her child underwent gender reassignment surgery during the third grade, prior to going through male puberty.

A lot of minors have undergone “gender reassignment surgery” while still underage. But I have never heard of anyone having it as early as third grade, and Pepper-Jackson did not, either. Pepper-Jackson was treated initially with puberty blockers and then with female hormones, the common practice for males who identify as trans females and want to avoid puberty. I’ve written about this several times; the idea is that once boys undergo male puberty it is very difficult to “pass” as female on matter how much they try (unless they are naturally quite small and slight), but it’s much easier when male puberty is avoided. This has enormous costs, among them the tendency to not be able to experience sexual fulfillment. I consider it a form of child abuse by the medical establishment.

However, the argument is that without having undergone male puberty, a male doesn’t have the testosterone advantage in sports and therefore it would be okay for that person to compete against women. Not so, says this group of pediatricians. The gist of the article – which is long – is that many of the differences between males and females which favor males in athletics occur prior to puberty and do not go away if puberty is blocked and female hormones administered.