Jews for a Secular Democracy Condemns Supreme Court Ruling Excluding Transgender Athletes

June 30, 2026 – Jews for a Secular Democracy condemns today’s Supreme Court ruling permitting states to categorically exclude transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s school sports.

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., decided together with Little v. Hecox, the Court held that Title IX permits schools to define separate athletic teams according to biological sex and that the West Virginia and Idaho laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause. This ruling is about far more than school athletics. It is part of a growing pattern in which government officials and courts are narrowing, if not smashing, constitutional protections while allowing one religiously rooted understanding of sex, gender, family, and identity to shape public law.

“Rather than allowing fairness to be determined by the rules of the governing athletic associations – rules that undergo continual review based on the ongoing scientific understanding of biology and physiology, as happens in other professional and amateur sports, and which is then applied evenly on an athlete-by-athlete basis – this Supreme Court instead has allowed politicians to blanket discriminate against an entire group of people based not on science but on a fundamentalist religious approach in order to enhance the political power of white Christian Nationalism,” said Paul Golin, Staff Lead of Jews for a Secular Democracy and Executive Director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism.  

The ruling comes just days after the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission released a sweeping draft report urging the country to move away from the traditional understanding of separation between church and state and instead build “bridges” between them. The commission, composed overwhelmingly of conservative Christians, calls for a greater role for religion in government, public schools, and public policy, while granting little recognition to religious minorities and nonreligious Americans.

Thomas Jefferson described the First Amendment as building “a wall of separation between Church and State.” That wall exists for a reason: the government should not take one religion’s beliefs about gender, family or morality and impose them on everyone else through law.

The two developments cannot be viewed in isolation. Across the country, Christian nationalist organizations and their political allies are seeking to redefine religious freedom as the power to impose their beliefs through government. We see this effort in restrictions on reproductive freedom, censorship of books and classroom instruction, government-sponsored religious displays, attacks on LGBTQ+ people, and demands that public policy conform to one sectarian conception of gender.

When government adopts a rigid definition of gender associated with the theology of a politically dominant religious movement, it does not protect religious freedom. It privileges one religious worldview over the beliefs, traditions, and consciences of everyone else.

Today’s Judaism as practiced by 85% of American Jews is one of many religions that does not share the harsh binary understanding of gender that is promoted by religious fundamentalism. Even historically, rabbinic texts recognized several categories of people whose bodies or gender characteristics do not fit neatly within a male-female binary. Modern Jewish communities differ in their theology and practice, but many understand the dignity and inclusion of transgender people as an expression of the Jewish commitment to the inherent worth of every human being and the metaphor of b’tzelem Elohim, that we are all created “in the image of God.”

This issue also directly affects Jewish freedom and safety. Jews have experienced the consequences of governments allowing a dominant religion to define whose identity, family, or way of life is legitimate. Our rights are most secure when the Constitution protects every person equally and prevents the government from enforcing religious conformity.

As the Jewish Council for Public Affairs stated today, exclusion never remains confined to one community. When the law narrows who is protected and who belongs, every minority becomes less safe. Our friends at Keshet, the Jewish LGBTQ+ organization, have an excellent explainer here about trans athletes. 

We stand with transgender and nonbinary young people, including transgender and nonbinary Jews. Their dignity is not a threat to anyone else’s freedom. A Constitution that protects only the people favored by the religious and political ruling party does not protect religious liberty at all. Instead, it endangers all of us.