The Supreme Court Votes 6-3 to Ban Transgender Athletes from Women’s Sports

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports — but a viral claim that the liberal justices “ruled to allow men to compete” gets the story exactly backwards.

Story Snapshot

The Supreme Court upheld state bans on transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports by a 6-3 vote in January 2026, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion.
All three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented, meaning they opposed the bans, not authored a ruling allowing participation.
A separate claim that liberal justices “upheld” Temporary Protected Status for Haitians is also factually wrong — they dissented from the 6-3 ruling that ended those protections.
Getting the facts straight matters: misreading a dissent as a majority ruling is a common political talking point, but it distorts what actually happened in court.

What the Supreme Court Actually Ruled

In January 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold state laws banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, stating that the Constitution and Title IX do not require states to restructure women’s sports. The six conservative justices formed that majority. The three liberal justices — Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson — voted against the bans, not for them.

Justice Sotomayor argued in her dissent that the court moved too fast and that there is “insufficient evidence to demonstrate that transgender girls and women possess an inherent physical advantage universally.” Justice Kagan, during oral arguments, asked lawyers how to craft a ruling that respects both the bans and access for transgender athletes. These were minority views — the bans stood. Calling the dissenters the ones who “allowed men to compete” is the opposite of what the record shows.

The Haitian TPS Claim Is Also Backwards

A related claim says the liberal justices “improperly upheld” Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants. TPS is a program that lets people from certain countries stay in the U.S. temporarily when it’s unsafe to return home. In June 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case known as Mullin v. Doe to let the Trump administration end TPS for Haitians and Syrians. The liberal justices dissented — they tried to block that outcome and lost.

No Supreme Court ruling exists in which the liberal justices voted to maintain or “uphold” TPS for Haitians. The conservative majority cleared the way to end those protections. Blaming the liberal justices for the opposite outcome is a factual error, not a matter of interpretation. Both the transgender sports ruling and the TPS ruling were driven by the same 6-3 conservative majority.

Why This Kind of Confusion Keeps Spreading

Mixing up a dissent with a majority ruling is one of the most common errors in political commentary about the Supreme Court. A dissent is a losing argument. It has no legal force. When a justice dissents, they are on the losing side. The majority opinion is what becomes the law. In both of these cases, the conservative justices won. The liberal justices lost. That is the record.

People across the political spectrum are right to be frustrated when institutions seem to fail them. But that frustration is best aimed at accurate targets. Misreading court rulings — whether by accident or design — muddies the water and makes it harder for citizens to hold the right people accountable. On these two rulings, the facts are clear: the conservative majority decided both outcomes, and the liberal justices dissented both times.