Advocate NL 6/30/26

It's the last day of Pride Month, and the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to the LGBTQ+ community -- but not a complete knockout.

Audience Editor Edgar Ramirez here, back in your inbox on this Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld state bans on transgender girls and women competing in girls’ and women’s school sports, delivering a major victory to Republican-led states and a devastating defeat to trans students who had asked the justices to let them participate in public school life as themselves, Christopher Wiggins reports.

But Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights, says there's some light at the end of what can feel like a very long dark tunnel in the fight for equality.

"This is a disappointing decision, but a narrow one, a setback, not the end of the road," Minter writes. "The Court decided only what states may do in the specific arena of sports. It did not resolve the science, settle the standard of constitutional scrutiny, or take away schools’ freedom to include transgender athletes."

For those wondering what the science says about transgender women in sports, here's a refresher and a recent study that affirms what advocates of inclusion have said for years.

Our community did come away with one victory in the lower courts today: Transgender troops won a major ruling in their fight against Trump’s military ban. It's something worth celebrating while the fight continues, as firefighter Clayton McCallister, whom Wiggins profiled recently, said: “It will bend back our way at some point. It’s just a matter of when.”

Thanks folks, take care, keep on the Pride, and we'll be back tomorrow.

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