Facts over fear: Trans kids and high school sports
I am heartbroken about the Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing states to ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools. With so much credible data documenting that transgender athletes are far and few between in high school sports—and almost never impact them in the way people are afraid of—why are right wing lawmakers so hellbent on passing laws to exclude them? And, why are an increasing number of thoughtful and well-intentioned Americans on board with these hateful and heartbreaking policies?
To really understand this, I think you have to look into who is shaping the narrative around this issue and why. The lobby groups and politicians who are pushing hardest for excluding trans kids from school sports have done a very clever thing: They have taken a perfect and unimpeachable idea—fairness in girls’ and women’s sports—and made it the headline of their argument. During the 2024 election cycle, for example, anti-trans politicians aired more than 15,000 attack ads on the subject (NPR). They have also intentionally and systematically amplified and distorted information to make it appear as if trans kids are routinely dominating high school sports, breaking school records and essentially making sports unfair for girls.
The only problem is that it’s just not true. And their reasons for fighting for these laws may not exactly be what they seem.
The truth is that if the organizations leading the charge against trans kids had a history of supporting and elevating girls and women, it might be a different story. Instead, the very same organizations who are working day and night to “protect” the integrity of women’s sports are the very same organizations who have spent countless resources fighting against a woman’s right to choose—a right that most women in America support (60%, according to a 2026 Pew Research report). They are the very same organizations who have lobbied against same sex marriage (supported by 65% of Americans, according to a 2026 Gallup poll) and the very same organizations who, only three years ago, spent millions of dollars to ensure that a homophobic bakery owner in Colorado had the right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay customer.
In fact, if you didn’t know better, you might think that these organizations are more interested in limiting the rights of gay and transgender people than they are in promoting the rights of girls and women. Or worse—creating conditions in which anti-trans lawmakers are free to discriminate against their own constituents without fear of legal repercussions. Hmmm.
Furthermore, in their quest to shape public perception of this issue, these very same politicians and organizations have intentionally amplified and distorted news stories to make their case, often focusing the conversation on a handful of elite adult trans athletes, such as Lia Thomas and Imane Khelif, rather than on actual high school athletes. The result is that many well-intentioned people believe that girls’ high school sports are being completely “overrun” by trans athletes, who are consistently dominating competitions and breaking school records, which is simply not the case. In addition, these lobby groups have actually appropriated some of the language and ideas of the very law they fought so hard against decades ago. Would you be surprised to learn, for example, that one prominent organization—Concerned Women in America—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against the enactment of Title IX—a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs—claiming the law would undermine traditional gender roles, but is now using that very same law to “champion” female athletes.
The maddening thing is that many intelligent, thoughtful people sometimes do not look past the headlines at this issue. They are parents and students and citizens who have good intentions and a genuine desire to support and protect girls, but they are looking at the issue through a distorted lens of hypothetical “what ifs” that is not rooted in data or actual experience, but rather in the disingenuous amplification of worst case scenarios—scenarios that rarely or never come to pass.
The heartbreaking thing about these laws (now in 29 states) is that they not only harm the most vulnerable kids in our public schools by ostracizing and excluding them, but they also harm all kids by reinforcing negative stereotypes and cultivating misunderstanding and transphobia.
My goal here is to make a simple case for protecting trans kids' right to play high school sports that is rooted in the facts about this issue, gleaned from credible data from multiple sources. My position is one of child advocacy and my decision to write about this issue is informed by two simple things: First and foremost, I am concerned about the well-being of children. As a person who has committed her entire adult life to education, I understand deeply the way that exclusion lands on children and the way that inclusive policies in education have made schools safer and more equitable spaces. Secondly, my position as a female athlete, a mother, a teacher and a coach for most of my 64 years. 55 years of playing and watching sports; 39 years of teaching high school English, which means 39 years of conversations with high school kids and 39 years of reading journals and personal essays written by teenagers. 39 years of coaching everything from youth soccer to high school basketball to high school boys and girls tennis. In short, my life has given me the privilege of working closely with thousands of high school students and student athletes over almost four decades. I keep thinking that if I don’t have the agency and insight—and maybe even the responsibility—to talk about this issue, who does?
And to be perfectly clear, I want to limit this conversation to the realm of my own knowledge and experience and to the credible body of research that informs my understanding about this issue. I don’t want to talk about college or Olympic athletes, the science of hormones, puberty or gender affirming care. I want to start and end the conversation with high school athletics and why I am so absolute in my belief that transgender high school students should have the legally protected right to play high school sports.
Transgender High School Students
This is what I know about transgender high school students: They exist. It feels a little sad to have to make this assertion, but recent actions by federal officials have moved to recognize only two unchangeable genders, essentially trying to eliminate transgender as a legal designation. As an educator who works directly with high school students, I know that transgender students exist and that efforts by schools to be more inclusive in recent years did not create more transgender students, they created more space for them to be themselves. No dropped letter in an acronym or change in designation can erase human beings. Of course it’s complicated for some people to understand and as those people grapple to accept and support what they don’t fully understand, there can be lots of room for assumptions, misinformation and theoretical what ifs. That is why it is so important to follow the research. To that end, my conversation here relies heavily on the first nationally representative study on transgender students, published by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in 2023. That data, collected from 20,000 high school students, reveals some important facts:
Over 3% of high school students in the United States identify as transgender and an additional 2.2% say they are questioning their gender identity. By and large, transgender and questioning students are more likely to experience violence, poor mental health, suicidal ideation and unstable housing. One in four have attempted suicide. Many of theses students have felt unsafe at school, due to bullying and many have skipped or avoided school as a result. A profoundly high percentage (70%) of these students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
High School Sports
This is what I know about high school sports: Most kids play to have fun and be with their friends. Being a member of a team is often like being a member of a family and for many kids, the teams they belong to are the most consistent and supportive social networks they have. Not only do sports help high school kids to develop strong social connections and a sense of belonging, but they also help them to develop positive life skills, like self-discipline, confidence and resilience.
A large-scale 2021 study by the Aspen Institute (a non-profit organization devoted to gathering non-partisan information about complex problems) underscores my own experience. According to their research, the main reasons for playing high school sports were having fun (81%), getting exercise (79%), learning and improving skills (66%) and playing and make new friends (64%). Only 53% of students said their main reason for playing was winning games. Additionally, this research revealed some of the significant benefits of being active in high school sports, which include: less likely to smoke and use drugs; less likely to get pregnant in high school; more likely to go to college; higher self-esteem and lower levels of depression. Lifelong benefits include developing better self awareness, increased empathy and the cultivation of lifelong health and fitness habits.
The Problem
The most popular concern regarding this issue is that trans female athletes have an unfair advantage over other female athletes. In researching how often this happens, it is almost impossible to identify even a single episode of a trans female athlete impacting girls sports at the high school level. Credible data from multiple sources suggests that there are fewer than 100 known transgender athletes competing on K-12 girls teams nationwide and very few of those who have made enough of an impact on their sport to raise objections from people concerned with fairness. In 2021, when a spate of laws excluding trans high school athletes first began to be enacted by various states, the Associated Press contacted 20 legislators sponsoring bills in their states and not one could produce a single situation in which a trans athlete capitalized on an unfair advantage in their state or region. One lawmaker suggested that the laws were meant to “prevent possible problems in the future” (AP, 2021).
Well, it’s five years later and while I did find two reports of trans female athletes who had impacted their high school sports in a significant way—a cross country runner at a private school in Seattle (Fox News, 2022) and more recently, a pole vaulter in Maine (Newsweek, 2025)—the cases are still exceedingly rare. According to most sources, transgender students’ participation in sports has been a non-issue. In many states (including the one I work in) athletic organizations and their governing bodies have successfully been able to balance fairness, inclusion, and access to play without any problem.
Final Thoughts
If you are still on the fence about this issue, I would urge you to take the time to really dig into the research. The emotional harm these laws do to trans children is profound. All children—and especially trans children—need us to stand up and say that we see them and that we accept and support them. Protecting their right to participate in high school sports is not only one small way to do that, but also a clear signal to all children that transgender students belong. Sports are many things to many kids, but at the end of the day, they are a place to have fun and enjoy a sense of community. Why would we want to deny that to the kids who might need it most?
References & Resources
https://www.npr.org
https://www.sf.gov/trans-women-in-sports-facts-over-fear
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/30/us/supreme-court-trans-athletes
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/
https://glaad.org/gap/alliance-defending-freedom-adf/
https://concernedwomen.org/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a6.htm#
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/news
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/
https://www.hrc.org
https://apnews.com/article/lawmakers-unable-to-cite-local-trans-girls-sports
https://www.nfhs.org/media/5919559/workshop-16.pdf
