The Supreme Court tossed a federal appeals court ruling on Monday in a dispute over a strip search of a transgender inmate, sending it back to the lower court while pointing to the high court’s recent rulings in transgender cases over sports and surgeries for minors.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit had sided with a biologically male inmate, who identified as a woman, after an El Paso County, Colorado, jail tried to dismiss a lawsuit over the transgender inmate’s treatment. The transgender inmate argued that being subjected to full-body searches by male officers and being housed in male facilities violated the inmate’s constitutional rights, citing alleged abuses during the searches. The 10th Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to toss the lawsuit, allowing it to move forward, and ruled that gender identity is part of the sex-based protections covered under the Equal Protection Clause, despite recent Supreme Court rulings.
The Supreme Court vacated the 10th Circuit’s ruling on Monday and did not offer a detailed explanation for its decision. But the justices instructed the appeals court to consider the case in light of its June ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and its 2025 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti. The B.P.J. ruling found that state laws that separate sports by biological sex, rather than gender identity, do not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX. The Skrmetti ruling found that state laws banning minors from getting transgender procedures do not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
When appealing their case to the Supreme Court, jail officials cited those two cases as grounds for the high court to take it up and reverse the 10th Circuit’s ruling.
“By transforming an inmate’s subjective gender identity—of which there are over 70—into a sex-based constitutional classification triggering heightened scrutiny, the Tenth Circuit has subordinated prison security and the privacy interests of all to the preference of one in contravention of this Court’s prison-administration precedents,” jail officials said in their petition to the Supreme Court. “As a result of the quest to reconstitute sex-based distinctions under the Equal Protection Clause to include ‘gender identity,’ courts are floundering on the meaning of ‘sex.’”
The Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the ruling and remand the case is a key win for jail officials, but the appeals court will still have to decide how to move forward with the transgender inmate’s case. A new ruling from the 10th Circuit in the dispute could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
SUPREME COURT APPEARS POISED TO HAND COLORADO MAJOR LOSS IN RELIGIOUS PRESCHOOL CASE
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a case involving LGBT issues, regarding whether Colorado violated religious rights by keeping out Catholic preschools from their universal preschool program. The Catholic preschools have said they want to limit their schools to families who follow Catholic teachings, something Colorado officials have taken to mean excluding children of same-sex couples.
The high court is also sitting on an emergency petition from a student-athlete in Washington seeking to have the justices allow her to be excused from competing against biological boys in girls’ wrestling matches or to stop the state’s policies allowing biological boys to compete in girls’ sports.