NCAA says no plan to change transgender athlete rules after ruling

NCAA President Charlie Baker said the organization has no plan to change its transgender athlete rules after the Supreme Court upheld state bans on transgender girls and women competing on school sports teams. In a Face the Nation interview aired Tuesday, Baker said the Court’s decision did not force a rewrite at the national level and that the bigger fight now sits with states.

The ruling came in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., a 6-3 decision issued June 30 that effectively upheld Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender girls and women from school sports. The decision could reach similar laws in roughly two dozen to 27 other states that adopted comparable restrictions after Idaho became the first state to pass a ban on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. For colleges and athletic departments, that means the NCAA’s rules and state law may continue to pull in opposite directions depending on where a campus sits.

The NCAA already changed its participation policy on February 6, 2025, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on women’s sports. Under that policy, the men’s category is open to all eligible student-athletes, while the women’s category is restricted to student-athletes assigned female at birth. The NCAA also says schools keep autonomy over participation on their own campuses, but local, state and federal law supersede NCAA rules, and the policy applies to NCAA practice and competition in sports with gender-separated championships.

Baker’s remarks pointed to a practical reality that the Supreme Court ruling does not settle every campus dispute. In some states, existing high school or college rules may leave little room for immediate change, and reporting from Michigan indicated the ruling did not alter that state’s high school sports rules for now. That patchwork leaves individual schools to navigate not only NCAA eligibility standards but also state directives that may be stricter.

Advocates on both sides moved quickly to frame the decision as a broader turning point. GLAAD said the Court upheld state bans excluding transgender girls and women from school sports aligned with their authentic gender and called the ruling a setback for transgender rights. The legal and political pressure now shifts to statehouses and school boards, where the next round of fights is likely to focus on how far those bans can go and how institutions will enforce them.