I coached girls' track and field for years. Sprints and hurdles, the same events I ran in high school and college. I watched 15-year-old girls push themselves to the edge of what their bodies could do, competing for a state medal that meant something because everyone on that track started from the same biological baseline. That baseline is the entire point of women's sports. It's why the category exists.

On June 30, the Supreme Court got half of that right. In a decision split 6-3 on the constitutional question, the justices upheld Idaho and West Virginia laws, in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., barring biological males from competing on girls' and women's teams. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, pointed to the “inherent physical differences” between the sexes relevant to athletic performance, from height and strength to speed and endurance, and concluded that separate teams for biological males and females are a reasonable way to protect safety and competitive fairness. The plain meaning of “sex” in Title IX, he wrote, can't plausibly mean anything other than biological sex. Justice Clarence Thomas went further in concurrence, writing that a man doesn't get a legal right to compete against women just because he believes himself to be a woman. That's not a controversial statement of biology. It's a correct one.

Justice Neil Gorsuch added a separate opinion worth noting. He grounded the ruling in Congress's spending-clause power, the authority that lets Washington attach strings to........

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