"One of the worst days of my life:" SCOTUS ruling forces parents to break trans kids' hearts

Mikael McLaren counts himself as one of the lucky parents. When his 
daughter, now 21, sought to run cross-country in middle school and field 
hockey in high school, she was allowed. He didn’t have to go toe-to-toe 
with her school over regulations barring trans students from playing 
sports that aligned with their gender identity, or break the news that it 
would deny her the same access to athletic opportunities afforded to other 
girls in her school. It wasn’t without some obstacles, but her teams 
didn’t care that she was transgender; they only cared that she could play. 
Ultimately, his daughter had the power to decide for herself to quit 
hockey her senior year as the political climate in Ohio became more 
hostile.

But McLaren knows that many other transgender children aren’t so 
supported, and he fears the Supreme Court has now opened the door for even 
fewer to have the same access his child had. On June 30, the court ruled 
6-3 in favor of laws in West Virginia and Idaho banning transgender 
student athletes from competing in women and girls’ sports. Though the 
decision was narrow in its scope — the justices maintained that states and 
school associations should create policies on sports participation that 
best suit their students’ specific needs — parents say it doesn’t change 
how harmful the ruling is and will be to transgender children.

“It’s a two-for-one deal for the legislators,” McLaren told Salon. “Not 
only do they get to continue to really put the boot on the throat of an 
already marginalized community, but they also get the added bonus of being 
able to police women’s bodies.”

“At this point, there is no safe space,” he added. “School is not a safe 
space anymore. Sports teams are not a safe space. Going out into public as 
a visible transgender person — people are emboldened to act and react when 
they see transgender people — is becoming less and less safe.”

The conjoined court cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ, asked 
the justices to determine the constitutionality under the 14th Amendment 
and lawfulness under Title IX of state bans on student athletes’ 
participation in school sports based on sex assigned at birth.

The Supreme Court sided with the states, holding that, under the 14th 
Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title IX, public schools and 
universities in West Virginia and Idaho are allowed to determine 
eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex.

“The legislatures and the schools are better equipped — and under the 
Constitution, are the more appropriate entities — to assess the competing 
medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines,” Justice 
Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “Of course, no line that 
the States draw will satisfy everyone. But the Judiciary is not the proper 
institution to make what would often be arbitrary and highly intrusive 
athlete-by-athlete assessments.”

“At this point, there is no safe space.”

Josh Block, a lawyer for the student athletes and senior counsel for the 
ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, called the ruling a “narrow, disappointing 
result” during a Tuesday press conference. While it does bar transgender 
girls from enjoying the same access to sports as cisgender girls, the 
justices did not broadly limit Title IX protections for transgender 
students, bar other states from creating policy that allowed for trans 
girls to participate with cisgender girls, nor hold that discriminating 
against people based on transgender status is permissible under the 
Constitution, he explained.

“The folks that passed these laws in West Virginia, Idaho and other states 
across the country passed them with the goal of pushing transgender girls, 
and transgender people in general, out of public life,” Block said, 
adding: “They were hoping that this case would be a vehicle for the 
Supreme Court to give them everything they asked for, and I think what’s 
really important is that the court said, ‘No,’ over and over again.”

The decision is a “serious loss” for girls in states with bans, but it’s 
also not the end, added Sasha Buchert, director of nonbinary and 
transgender rights at Lambda Legal, who also represented the respondents.

“It’s a fight that’s going to continue state by state, school by school. 
In other words, this really says that, ‘Sure, a state may discriminate, 
not that they must discriminate,’” she said. “So states, schools and 
athletic associations should be taking every step to ensure that athletic 
opportunities exist for transgender girls.”

So far, of the 19 states with laws prohibiting discrimination in schools 
based on sexual orientation and gender identity, 17 have explicit guidance 
on the treatment and inclusion of trans students, according to the 
Movement Advancement Project. Twenty-seven states, however, have a law 
that bans transgender students from participating in sports consistent 
with their gender identity, and two have state regulations or agency 
policies with such a ban.

A Georgia parent, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for her and 
her trans daughter’s safety, told Salon that she worries about what the 
Supreme Court decision means for the ban in her state.

“It should not matter what state you live in. You should be able to [play 
on a team sport] anyway, regardless of what state you live in,” she said. 
“This idea that we’re from Georgia, so now she can’t play is horrifying.”

The parent said she and her family have been reeling from a Georgia High 
School Association sports regulation much like the laws the Supreme Court 
upheld. After the GHSA codified birth-assigned sex in its Constitution and 
prohibited boys from playing on girls’ teams in response to last year’s 
state ban, her high-school-aged daughter was barred from continuing and 
removed from her sports team despite several years of playing with her 
friends.

The high school, the parent said, offered her daughter a team manager role 
or the opportunity to practice and not compete, but that “was not even 
close to being a reasonable expectation.” She recalled the devastation of 
having to inform her child of how the law would affect her.

“I think that’s probably the hardest thing we’ve had to deal with in 
raising her. It was really the first time that she had been discriminated 
against because of her trans identity,” the parent said, describing how 
disappointed, upset and disgusted her daughter was by the news. “It was a 
really difficult conversation to have. It was probably one of the worst 
days of my life, when I told her what was going on.”

For Ali Munshi, whose daughter Eliza Munshi had to navigate Virginia’s 
sports ban in 2025, the ruling struck a particularly strong nerve. Despite 
having the support of her community, friends and school, her daughter was 
prohibited from playing on the girls’ track and field team on account of 
Virginia’s 2023 policy separating sports teams by sex rather than gender 
identity. She remembered she and Eliza’s father being proud and nervous 
when their child decided she would play on the boys’ team to make a 
statement instead.

“We all really do want the same things,” Ali Munshi said. “We want 
fairness, and we want our kids to be protected. Being the parent of a 
trans kid is no different than that. I don’t want trans kids to get 
special treatment; I want them to get equal treatment.”

Eliza Munshi told Salon that it was important for her to take a stand, 
forgo the option to only practice with the girls’ team and instead compete 
in boys’ shot put and discus to be visible enough in the community that 
she could spark greater understanding from others.

“As far as putting myself out there goes, I’m so comfortable in my gender 
and my expression and the way that I identify [that] putting myself out 
there is the least I could do,” she said. She had always heard stories of 
the trans children who struggled, were denied access to gendered bathrooms 
and gender-affirming care, but not many about children like her who had 
support. “I carried that with me through track as well,” Eliza Munshi 
said. “I was like, ‘I can show people what a success story looks like.’”

“I think people have such an idea in their head of what this scary trans 
person looks like — this man with a beard and a dress trying to play 
women’s soccer — and that’s just not what’s happening,” she added, 
emphasizing that no one transitions just to get an advantage in sports.

Ali Munshi said she recognizes her daughter’s success as a natural outcome 
of her family and community affirming and encouraging her from an early 
age. That other trans kids wouldn’t receive the institutional, social and 
familial support to be who they are without judgment or roadblocks is what 
makes the Supreme Court’s decision especially scary.

“The hardest part for me is the message that it sends: that, somehow, 
being trans is wrong and bad,” Ali Munshi said about the ruling. “I don’t 
want kids to think that, and I don’t want parents to think that because 
affirming your kid is right and life-saving.”

https://www.salon.com/2026/07/05/one-of-the-worst-days-of-my-life-scotus-
ruling-forces-parents-to-break-trans-kids-hearts/