Opinion

RILEY GAINES: Supreme Court hands women an important win, but the fight isn’t over

This is an enormous victory, but until every girl in every state has the same protections, the work remains unfinished

By Riley Gaines Fox News

Published June 30, 2026 3:58pm EDT

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The Supreme Court has handed women a massive victory by upholding reality and federal law with a favorable ruling on two landmark cases in a single opinion.

Women’s sports CAN be just for women. The phrasing there is important and I’ll explain why in a moment.

In a landmark decision addressing laws in Idaho and West Virginia, the court upheld state protections reserving women's sports for women. The court held that state laws reserving girls’ and women’s sports for biological females do not violate Title IX or the equal protection clause. In other words, "sex" means biological sex — not a subjective identity that changes from person to person.

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That shouldn't be controversial. Until just a few years ago, it wasn't.

The timing couldn't be more fitting. Just days after the 54th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that opened doors for generations of female athletes, the Supreme Court affirmed that states may preserve the very category Title IX was designed to protect.

There was one important divide.

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The court split 6-3 on whether these laws violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The three dissenting justices (all Democrat-appointed women) would have held that laws protecting women's sports unlawfully discriminate.

The irony speaks for itself.

In short, the Supreme Court held that states are free to reserve women's sports for women because the sexes are not similarly situated when it comes to athletic competition. The court acknowledged what every parent, coach, athlete, and frankly every kindergartener already knows: men and women are biologically different, and those differences matter in sports.

If your first reaction is, "how did we ever get here?" you're not alone.

I ask myself that question almost daily.

For nearly 250 years, America had no trouble understanding what words like "man," "woman," "male," "female" and "sex" meant.

Then came the........

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