The Supreme Court Rules That Sports Are Different
Sports are unlike other parts of American life—treating men and women differently on the court or the field is okay. That’s the crucial point made by the Supreme Court’s judgment in West Virginia v. B. P. J. yesterday. By a 6–3 margin, the justices upheld state laws that define men’s and women’s sports by biological sex instead of gender identity. In other words, states cannot be forced to allow genetically male athletes who identify as women to compete in female sports; legislators have a legitimate interest in preserving fair opportunities for female athletes.In certain ways, this is a much narrower ruling than the plaintiff’s supporters feared. And it is easy to reconcile with the court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, which held—in a major victory for LGBTQ rights—that employees cannot be fired for dressing or otherwise presenting themselves in ways that defy sex stereotypes.As yesterday’s ruling acknowledges, athletic competition raises issues that do not apply to employment or housing. The landmark federal civil-rights law Title IX protects single-sex teams because male athletes are typically stronger than their female counterparts, and the latter also deserve a chance to enjoy the benefits of athletic competition. Even the dissenting opinion by the three liberal justices conceded that segregating sports by biological sex is not unlawful sex discrimination under Title IX.Crucially, the majority ruling, by the conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, positions the court solidly in the mainstream of American public opinion: Somewhere between 66 to 80 percent of Americans believe that sports should be segregated by sex, rather than gender identity. Nonetheless, much of the online reaction to the case has been hyperbolic, driven by the demands of the Democratic Party’s internal politics. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts congressman who previously raised concerns that his own daughters might compete against biological males, and is now running in a Senate prima