Supreme Court in ’26: Top cases include fights over transgender athletes, conversion therapy
Justices expected to decide who is allowed to play on schools’ female sports teams
The Supreme Court isn’t likely to make any landmark religion rulings in 2026, such as the 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision that outlawed state-led prayers in public schools or 2022’s Carson v. Makin, which put secular and religious schools on the same legal footing when it comes to receiving taxpayer support. But it will continue what it has been doing for several years now, deciding key LGTBQ-related cases that are also connected with religious concerns.
Three major LGTBQ/religion cases at the center of the culture wars will almost certainly be decided this year:
🟪 Little v. Hecox, in which two athletes, one of them a transgender woman1, is fighting Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which requires competitors in the state’s public K-12 schools, colleges and universities to be biological females.
🟪 West Virginia v. B.P.J., in which a mother and transgender daughter are challenging a West Virginia law similar to Idaho’s.
🟪 Chiles v. Salazar, the case involving a Colorado mental-health counselor challenging her state’s law that bans conversion therapy for minors; conversion therapy is the attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identification.
Two religion-related cases that aren’t connected with LGTBQ issues also are expected to be decided by the court in the session that will most likely end in June:
🟪 Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, where a Rastafarian whose hair was forcibly cut by authorities while he was imprisoned is seeking monetary damages.
🟪 First Choice Women’s Resource Center v. Platkin, in which a New Jersey faith-based crisis pregnancy center is fighting a state subpoena seeking information about its donors and operations.
The high court will hold oral arguments for the two transgender athletics cases together on Jan. 13 as some of the same constitutional issues are at play. Both cases are structured in such as way that religious freedom issues aren’t directly at issue, although the 14th Amendment, which provides for equal protection under the law, is. Even so, various churches and other religious organizations have told the Supreme Court in friend-of-the-court briefs that a ruling for the athletes would inhibit religious freedom.
The Donald Trump administration has formally sided with upholding state law in both cases.
Oral arguments have already been held in the other three cases.
Here’s a quick look at these five cases:
Little v. Hecox
This case began when Lindsay Hecox filed a lawsuit in order to participate with the track team at Boise State University in Idaho. (Bradley Little is the governor of Idaho.) She won at the appeals level, and her attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to simply let the appellate decision stand, as Hecox has “ceased playing sports covered by Idaho’s law and will instead focus on graduating without the extraordinary pressures of this litigation and related public scrutiny,” making the case moot.
But her attorneys are continuing to argue the case because of the possibility that the high court could decide the issue on its merits.
Idaho passed its law against participation of transgender female athletes in 2020, making it the first state to do so.
Her attorneys are arguing that Hecox “has no advantage over her cisgender peers. “Petitioners’ merits arguments all depend on the contested proposition that transgender women and girls have an athletic advantage over cisgender women and girls — even when (as in Lindsay’s case) their circulating testosterone is typical of cisgender women,” they write in their final brief to the high court.
The crux of Idaho’s legal argument comes in its brief’s second paragraph in which it says of the appellate decision:
That decision distorts the law and the science. The Equal Protection Clause allows sex-based classifications if they are substantially related to achieving important government interests. Idaho’s statute easily clears that hurdle. On average, men are faster, stronger, bigger, more muscular, and have more explosive power than women. For female athletes to compete safely and excel, they deserve sex-specific teams. Even Respondent Hecox wants women’s teams to exist; Hecox just wants to redefine “women” based on gender identity rather than biology. But in sports, biology matters, not gender identity. So Idaho’s sex-based line is correct and constitutional.
West Virginia v. B.P.J.
This case had its start when when a middle-school student, Becky Pepper-Jackson, sought to run on the cross-country and track teams at her school in Bridgeport, W. Va. As is the case with the Idaho law, the West Virginia law was struck down at the appellate level.
West Virginia is basing its case not only on the 14th Amendment but also Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law outlawing sex discrimination in education. Title IX has been widely used to expand girls’ and women’s athletics.
If the Supreme Court were to uphold the law, the growth of female athletics would be halted, West Virginia says in its brief:
[Title IX’s promise of female sports advancement] is now in danger. Male athletes identifying as female are increasingly competing in women’s sports, erasing the opportunities Title IX ensured. Women and girls have lost places on sports teams, surrendered spots on championship podiums, and suffered injuries competing against bigger, faster, and stronger males. For too many women and girls, the “thrill of victory” is gone.
Like Hecox’s attorneys, the attorneys for B.P.J. contest the argument that allowing transgender female athletes to compete gives them an unfair advantage:
West Virginia’s brief is brimming with contradictions. It asserts that its categorical ban reflects real biological differences between boys and girls with respect to athletics. But whether that assertion is true for transgender girls — in particular, transgender girls like B.P.J. who have never experienced endogenous male puberty and who have instead gone through a female hormonal puberty — remains a disputed question of fact that cannot be resolved in this Court. And if B.P.J. has no biological athletic advantage over her cisgender peers, West Virginia’s arguments fall apart.
Chiles v. Salazar
Kaley Chiles, an evangelical Christian mental-health counselor, is claiming that Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy for minors violates her right to free speech.
Chiles and her attorneys say that she has no intention of trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of her clients; they have been framing their legal argument over the definition that Colorado uses in its conversion therapy law, which includes efforts to “eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” It is common in many legal therapies to address the feelings that people have, they point out.
An attorney for Colorado told justices during oral arguments last year that the nature of the therapy Chiles provides has been a “persistent issue” in the legal dispute. The state’s position is that the law regulates conduct rather than speech, and the state has the right to determine which therapies are valid as part of the licensing process.
During the oral arguments, a majority of justices appeared sympathetic to Chiles’ position.
Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections
At every level of judicial review, judges have agreed that Damon Landor was mistreated in 2020 when Louisiana prison guards forcibly cut his hair contrary to his wishes as a Rastafarian. Rastafarians typically take a vow to, among other things, not have their hair cut.
The legal question facing the court is whether Landor is entitled to sue prison officials under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which Congress passed to provide prisoners with some religious rights beyond those mandated by the U.S. Constitution. That is a narrow legal issue that avoids constitutional questions, and it was unclear after oral arguments how the Supreme Court justices might rule.
First Choice Women’s Resource Center v. Platkin
The First Choice Women’s Resource Center is fighting a subpoena issued by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin in 2023. The subpoena seeks donor lists as part of an effort to determine whether First Choice has been providing misleading information to potential donors.
The case will be decided on a narrow technical issue: whether First Choice can immediately challenge the subpoena in federal court or whether it must fight the subpoena in state courts before it can seek a federal judicial remedy.
During oral arguments last year, justices appeared to be sympathetic to the pregnancy center’s legal claims.
In this article, phrases such as transgender female and transgender woman are used to refer to biological males (as defined by applicable state law) who identify as female.