The U.S. Supreme Court just upheld laws in two states banning trans women and girls from competing in sports.

The ruling sets a new precedent around existing and future legislation restricting the rights of trans people in sports and more broadly. And it’s likely to have a much wider impact as these bans have already been replicated in at least 25 other U.S. states.

The court’s conservative majority voted to overturn previous judgments issued by lower courts in favour of two trans student athletes: Lindsay Hecox in Idaho and Becky Pepper-Jackson in West Virginia.

In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the U.S. to ban trans women and girls from women’s sports teams with the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Hecox sued the state after she was barred from the varsity women’s track team at Boise State University, alleging that the law violated her right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

In the case of Pepper-Jackson, the 16-year-old shot-putter challenged West Virginia’s law on the basis that since she had undergone gender-affirming treatment at a young age, she did not have an unfair advantage in intramural sports.

At the heart of all of this is Title IX. The landmark 1972 law bans sex-based discrimination in education programs that are publicly funded. For student athletes, this means providing equal opportunity, treatment, scholarship funding and facilities regardless of gender.

But today’s opinion, authored by Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, argued that because Title IX explicitly allows sports teams that are segregated by biological sex, states should be able to limit athletes by their assigned sex at birth.

This ruling creates more questions than answers, and that’s exactly the point. Not only does it conflate cases from the college varsity level and middle school intramural sports, it also undermines how Title IX is interpreted. The result is a new precedent based on confusion and fear-mongering.

Those against trans women and girls competing in women’s sports want you to believe that it’s just about protecting young girls from unfairness—but that’s not the case. Study after study has not shown any competitive advantage for trans women and girls in sports.

This ruling is just another example of enshrined rights being rolled back for political theatre—and all at the expense of trans women and girls in the U.S. who just want to play sports.