The Fight Over Women’s Sports Just Took Another Turn

A New York judge just told a private university it cannot hide behind federal rules to kick a transgender runner out of a women’s track meet, sharpening the clash between state law, Trump’s sports order, and basic fairness for female athletes.

Story Snapshot

New York judge says state gender-identity protections beat Trump’s Executive Order 14201 for college sports disputes.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) loses its bid to toss a lawsuit by transgender sprinter Sadie Schreiner.^[4]
The ruling rejects the school’s broad Title IX claim that all transgender women must be banned from women’s events.^[1]
Supreme Court appears ready to back state bans in Idaho and West Virginia, putting this New York approach at risk.^[3]

Judge sides with state law over Trump sports order

A New York County Supreme Court judge ruled that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute wrongly blocked transgender athlete Sadie Schreiner from a women’s track meet, letting her discrimination lawsuit move forward.^[4] The judge said New York’s law protecting against gender-identity discrimination controls the case, not President Trump’s Executive Order 14201 on women’s sports.^[1] He stressed that Executive Order 14201 is not a statute or formal regulation and therefore cannot automatically wipe out state civil rights protections.^[1]

In his written opinion, the judge explained that Executive Order 14201 “is not a statute, it is not a regulation, and it does not concern foreign policy,” so it does not preempt New York’s anti-discrimination law.^[1] That matters because the Trump order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” directs schools to treat sex as biological and bars transgender participation on women’s teams where federal funding is involved.^[17] By treating the order as non‑preemptive, the court signaled that states can still enforce their own rules when they choose to protect gender identity.

Court rejects broad Title IX ban argument

RPI tried to defend its decision by pointing to Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination in education, claiming it categorically bans transgender women from women’s sports.^[1] The judge was not persuaded. He wrote that the university “merely gives lip service” to the idea that Title IX requires a blanket ban, and he noted they failed to cite any specific Department of Education regulations that say all transgender women must be excluded from female teams.^[1] That criticism undercuts efforts by schools to use Title IX as a simple excuse for sweeping bans.

The ruling lands while the Supreme Court is weighing state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that bar transgender girls and women from female school sports.^[5] Those states argue that males have lasting physical advantages over females and that bans are needed to protect fairness and safety for girls.^[5] Several justices sounded ready to let those laws stand, which would strengthen the Trump administration’s fairness-focused approach but could also spark conflicts with states like New York that protect gender identity in sports.^[3]

National battle over women’s sports and transgender bans

President Trump’s Executive Order 14201 tells the Department of Justice and Department of Education to interpret Title IX as keeping biological males out of women’s sports and warns that schools could lose federal funding if they allow transgender participation.^[17] The National Collegiate Athletic Association followed suit, updating its policy to bar athletes assigned male at birth from women’s competitions to align with the order and avoid funding risks.^[13] Together, these moves gave schools strong reasons to adopt strict eligibility rules in the name of fairness and equal opportunity for women’s sports.^[17]

A New York judge ruled against a university that blocked a transgender athlete from competing in a women's track meet, saying that state law banning discrimination based on gender identity supersedes President Trump's executive order on female sports. https://t.co/Nz8RCizHJK

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) June 27, 2026

At the same time, lower courts and advocacy groups are fighting back, arguing that gender identity deserves protection under Title IX and the Constitution.^[18] In some cases, like challenges to Idaho’s earlier ban, judges have blocked state restrictions and said they violate equal protection.^[18] But in other cases, federal appeals courts have given non‑transgender female athletes standing to sue over inclusion policies, creating a legal path to attack school rules that allow transgender girls into female events.^[2] The result is a patchwork: many states ban transgender participation, while others, such as New York, treat gender identity as a protected category.^[24]

What this means for parents, athletes, and Trump supporters

For conservative families who care deeply about fairness in girls’ sports, this New York ruling raises real concerns. A single state judge has placed New York’s gender-identity law above the Trump administration’s effort to keep women’s sports for biological females, at least for now.^[1] That means colleges in New York face pressure from two sides: federal rules warning them not to deny women equal athletic chances and state law telling them they cannot bar transgender athletes based on gender identity alone.

If the Supreme Court soon upholds bans in Idaho and West Virginia, those decisions could reinforce Trump’s order nationwide and push more states to lock in protections for women’s sports based on sex at birth.^[3] Yet rulings like the Schreiner case show that some judges still favor broad anti-discrimination rules, even when they clash with federal guidance.^[4] Parents and athletes should expect more lawsuits, more confusion, and more hard choices for schools as they try to balance fairness for girls, safety, and respect for individual identity in a fast-changing legal landscape.