Heartbreaking Supreme Court Decision Allows States to Ban Transgender Student Athletes
CONTACT: Jordan Wilhelmi | jordan@unbendablemedia.com
NBJC Warns Decision Will Expand Scrutiny of Black Women, Girls, and Transgender Youth
WASHINGTON – Dr. David J. Johns, CEO and Executive Director of the National Black Justice Collective (NBJC), issued the following statement in response to today’s Supreme Court decision upholding state bans on transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s school sports:
“Today’s decision is another painful reminder that transgender young people continue to be used as political pawns in a manufactured culture war. Instead of rejecting years of fearmongering directed at an extraordinarily small number of transgender student athletes, the Supreme Court has chosen to legitimize it.
“Let’s be clear: this has never really been about sports. It has always been about whether our transgender siblings, brothers, sisters, and babies deserve the same dignity, opportunities, and freedoms as everyone else. Our young people have been transformed into a national political obsession—not because they threaten girls’ and women’s sports, but because they make convenient targets for politicians seeking to divide and distract us from their own failures.
“Black transgender youth will once again bear the greatest burden of this decision. Already navigating the intersecting harms of racism, sexism, transmisia, and economic inequality, they are now being told by the highest court in the land that they may be excluded simply because of who they are. That message is as unnecessary as it is cruel.
“We refuse to accept a future where fear is mistaken for fairness or exclusion is celebrated as equality. Today’s decision is not the end of this fight. States remain able to reject these bans, repeal existing laws that exclude based on gender, and adopt policies that ensure every child has the opportunity to participate fully.
“We call on governors, legislators, school boards, educators, coaches, youth workers, and athletic associations across the country to continue building programs where every young person can learn, compete, and experience the confidence and sense of belonging that sports make possible.
“Don’t fall for the manufactured gender wars. Let’s all get free, together.”
Victoria Kirby York, Director of Public Policy and Programs of the National Black Justice Collective, added:
“The Court didn’t rule that ten kids out of 510,000 athletes threaten fairness in sports. It ruled that states can decide who counts as a girl — and Black women and girls have been paying that price long before this case existed.
“This ruling upheld the bans, but it did not validate the premise behind them. What it enables isn’t fair competition — it’s a verification regime, one that schools and states now have a freer hand to use against any girl whose body, voice, or performance doesn’t match expectations. That mechanism has a track record going back decades, from Olympian Caster Semenya’s eleven months sidelined despite being raised and legally recognized as female her whole life, to a long line of sex-testing cases from the 1980s and 90s. And as a mother, it terrifies me to think of the sexual abuse U.S. gymnasts suffered at the hands of their team physician, and the gateway to predators a regime of school-based gender verification could open for our kids.
“As a Black civil rights organization, we care about this because this enforcement apparatus doesn’t stay confined to its stated target. Black cisgender and intersex women and girls have been harmed alongside Black transgender women and girls as casualties of ‘protect women’s sports’ policy for generations — Serena Williams facing conspiracy theories that she’s ‘really a man,’ Brittney Griner facing the same accusations rooted in old, racist ideas about which bodies count as feminine. When we say protect Black women and girls, we include all of us.”