RILEY GAINES: Supreme Court hands women an important win, but the fight isn’t over

The Supreme Court has handed women a massive victory by upholding reality and federal law with a favorable ruling on two landmark cases in a single opinion.

Women’s sports CAN be just for women. The phrasing there is important and I’ll explain why in a moment.

In a landmark decision addressing laws in Idaho and West Virginia, the court upheld state protections reserving women's sports for women. The court held that state laws reserving girls’ and women’s sports for biological females do not violate Title IX or the equal protection clause. In other words, "sex" means biological sex — not a subjective identity that changes from person to person.

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That shouldn't be controversial. Until just a few years ago, it wasn't.

The timing couldn't be more fitting. Just days after the 54th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that opened doors for generations of female athletes, the Supreme Court affirmed that states may preserve the very category Title IX was designed to protect.

There was one important divide.

The court split 6-3 on whether these laws violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The three dissenting justices (all Democrat-appointed women) would have held that laws protecting women's sports unlawfully discriminate.

The irony speaks for itself.

In short, the Supreme Court held that states are free to reserve women's sports for women because the sexes are not similarly situated when it comes to athletic competition. The court acknowledged what every parent, coach, athlete, and frankly every kindergartener already knows: men and women are biologically different, and those differences matter in sports.

If your first reaction is, "how did we ever get here?" you're not alone.

I ask myself that question almost daily.

For nearly 250 years, America had no trouble understanding what words like "man," "woman," "male," "female" and "sex" meant.

Then came the cultural insanity of the last several years, when institutions, corporations, universities, governing bodies and even courts began pretending that objective reality was somehow up for debate.

We reached a point where a sitting Supreme Court justice famously said she couldn't define what a woman is because she "wasn't a biologist."

When we've reached the point where the judge on the highest court in the country can't answer a question every child can answer, it becomes difficult to be surprised by anything.

Thankfully, today's decision moves us back toward common sense. But let's be clear about what this ruling does and what it doesn't.

What does this ruling mean?

I hate to bring you down just as I built you up, but this decision isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be. And by "we," I mean those of us who believe girls, regardless of where they live, should never have to fear being met with a large man staring her down on the other side of the volleyball net.

While we should certainly celebrate the win, the ruling just means having a sports category solely for women isn’t unconstitutional. Until 2020, this wouldn’t have been considered progress or worth celebrating because it was the standard position to take. The ruling does not mean states have to make the women’s category exclusive to real women, it just means it’s not illegal if they do.

That distinction matters. May — not must.

Basically, this ruling doesn’t reach the 23 states that have not passed some sort of state law banning men from competing in women’s sports. Fairness and safety in sports for girls depends on your zip code.

Where do we go from here?

President Donald Trump deserves credit for making this issue impossible to ignore. He campaigned on protecting women's sports, signed an executive order shortly after taking office and hasn’t been shy talking about it since.

You’ve all seen the videos of him imitating the male weightlifter… if the President of the United States ever becomes too much for him, he could always be a comedian.

But executive orders aren't permanent. The next president can revoke them with the stroke of a pen. That's why Congress must act.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act passed the House but has stalled in the Senate. If lawmakers truly believe women deserve equal opportunity, fairness and safety, they should codify these protections into federal law rather than leaving them dependent on whichever administration occupies the White House.

We need states to act through legislation or ballot measures. We need real enforcement mechanisms. We need a culture willing to push back.

Despite the positive ruling, the fight continues.

What happens to states like California or Washington state who will inevitably continue to act in defiance because they have crippling Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Those states will continue to suffer from the very real, diagnosable disease they contracted in 2016: TDS. The usual bad actors will keep being the villains in the story. They will continue to put the feelings of boys before the physical safety of girls. Chew on that for a second.

I hope the Department of Justice and the Department of Education aggressively enforce existing federal law against institutions that continue violating the rights of women and girls. Unfortunately, legal challenges take time, and activist states will almost certainly seek injunctions and other delays.

Accountability will also have to come elsewhere.

History shows institutions change course when ignoring reality becomes too expensive.

Parents, athletes, donors, consumers and voters all have leverage. Universities, athletic associations, corporations and governing bodies should understand there are real consequences for sacrificing women's rights in service of political ideology.

Most importantly, individual athletes should continue standing up for themselves.

When schools or athletic organizations violate the rights of girls, litigation should remain on the table. Every successful lawsuit makes it more expensive to discriminate against female athletes and harder for institutions to pretend there isn't a problem.

It must be expensive for the people who knowingly and willingly put girls in harm's way for the sake of ideology.

They believe they’re giving a middle finger to President Trump when they defy his executive order and Title IX, but they’re not. They’re giving a middle finger to all the girls and women in their state.

Will the trans issue continue to be an issue in 2026 and 2028? Will Democrats keep leaning into their extremism?

I’m no political strategist (although, at this rate, I do believe I could advise the Democrats better than their current advisors if the goal is success), but I have no reason to believe the issue won’t be front and center again the next election cycle. This is the hill Democrats have chosen to die on.

We won the presidency, maintained control in the House, and gained control in the Senate. It was the red wave I had expected largely thanks to how radical the Democrats had become on the culture issues. As a person who understands cause and effect, I thought the Democrats would slowly begin to recant from their voting record and previous positions.

The other side has only become more radical. The extremism isn’t limited to just the gender ideology issue either. Look at the candidates they’ve put forward since the 2024 election. James Talarico believes God is non-binary and there are six genders for crying out loud.

As long as they continue insisting biological sex doesn't matter in sports, Republicans shouldn't stop asking the question. Every candidate seeking public office should have to answer something incredibly simple:

Should girls compete against boys?

If their answer is some form of "yes," deflection or a refusal to engage, then that should be disqualifying to any commonsense American. If you can’t emphatically say men can't become women, why should I believe a single word that comes out of your mouth on any topic? You’ve already proven yourself detached from reality.

What’s still at stake?

This ruling isn’t the finish line like we want it to be; it’s really just the starting line. Title IX, once again, means something. Now we work to make sure every state recognizes its significance for all Americans, but specifically for women and girls.

This case was never only about sports.

Sports simply revealed the broader question our country has been wrestling with for years: does biological sex still matter under the law?

Today's decision says yes. That's an enormous victory, but until every girl in every state has the same protections, the work remains unfinished.

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For me, this isn't an abstract legal debate. It's about my daughter.

I want her to know that if she earns a championship, it's because she beat the best women, not because adults redefined what a woman is. I want her to know that if she's told she has equal opportunity, those words actually mean something. I want her generation to inherit a country that doesn't require courage to acknowledge obvious biological reality.

That's what's still at stake.

Today, the Supreme Court took an important step toward restoring that reality.

Now it's up to the rest of us to finish the job.