By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham has spent the back half of the WNBA season as the face of a fight that has nothing to do with basketball. Since telling ESPN in July that she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room,” rallies for and against her have followed the Fever to Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas and Minnesota, according to the Associated Press, with organizers announcing plans for more as the Fever’s schedule continues. The league has fined her, tried and failed to censor fans’ shirts at an Atlanta game, and watched its commissioner get publicly questioned over the episode.
The backdrop to all of it is a Supreme Court ruling most casual fans never noticed. On June 30, the Court held 6-3 that states may lawfully limit girls’ and women’s school sports to biological females. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said: “The States may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females.” The ruling didn’t require any state to do that. It just cleared the legal runway for the 27 states that already ban transgender participation, and left the rest, Maryland included, to decide for themselves.
Maryland hasn’t changed anything. And the reason isn’t public indifference. Lawmakers have tried five times since 2022 to force the issue, and five times it has died in committee.
“Maryland hasn’t changed anything. And the reason isn’t public indifference. Lawmakers have tried five times since 2022 to force the issue, and five times it has died in committee.”
Where Maryland Actually Stands
The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association has allowed transgender students to compete under its Guidance for Participation of Transgender Youth in Interscholastic Athletics since 2012. The policy doesn’t set one statewide rule. It hands the decision to each of Maryland’s 24 local school systems, directing them to apply criteria “consistent with their gender identity,” according to the guidance language quoted in this year’s legislative fiscal analysis. That decentralized structure is why Montgomery County Public Schools, for example, spells out its own three-part eligibility test for students, while other districts handle it differently.
“The policy doesn’t set one statewide rule. It hands the decision to each of Maryland’s 24 local school systems.”
Maryland also isn’t an outlier by accident. Gender identity has been a protected class under state law since the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, and a 2022 law added school-specific nondiscrimination protections covering the same ground. Any bill overriding the sports guidance would have to carve out an exception to law already on the books.
The Bill That Keeps Dying
That’s exactly what this year’s attempt tried to do. Senate Bill 50 and its House companion, House Bill 63, both titled the “Fairness in Girls’ Sports Act,” would have required school sports teams designated for girls, females, or women to exclude students of the male sex, and would have barred any agency from penalizing a school for enforcing that line.
What happened to each bill this session:
- SB 50: pre-filed October 8, 2025; sponsored by Sen. Mary Beth Carozza, a Republican, and Sen. Ron Watson, a Democrat; received a Senate hearing February 18; no vote was ever recorded.
- HB 63: pre-filed September 4, 2025; sponsored by seven Republican delegates led by Kathy Szeliga; received a House hearing February 5; no vote was ever recorded.
“Neither bill was formally defeated. Both simply never came back up for a vote after their hearings.”
Neither bill was formally defeated. Both simply never came back up for a vote after their hearings, the standard way a one-party-dominant committee lets a bill quietly expire. It’s the same outcome the legislation has met every year since 2022, according to testimony filed by Trans Maryland, an advocacy group that has opposed the bill each time it’s been introduced.
The Senate sponsorship is the one detail that breaks the expected partisan pattern. Watson, who represents a heavily Democratic Prince George’s County district, co-sponsored the bill alongside Carozza. His House colleagues who filed the identical companion bill drew no Democratic co-sponsors at all.
“The Senate sponsorship is the one detail that breaks the expected partisan pattern.”
Opponents built their case around the existing local-control system. The Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland told lawmakers it “favors the maintenance of locally controlled systems of interscholastic athletics” over a single statewide mandate. Trans Maryland’s written testimony pointed to a 2024 British Journal of Sports Medicine study, partly funded by the International Olympic Committee, that it said found no inherent athletic advantage among transgender women athletes studied. The debate over that science remains unsettled nationally and was central to the Court’s own reasoning in June, when it declined to require individualized, case-by-case medical exceptions, reasoning that judges evaluating each athlete would be “an almost impossible task.”
The fight also has a visible political edge in Annapolis. In February, around National Girls & Women in Sports Day, Democratic Dels. Eric Ebersole and Nick Allen hung a sign from the Maryland Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus in their office window stating that transgender women have no competitive advantage. The Maryland Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican delegates, publicized it as an example of the majority dismissing rather than engaging the concerns behind bills like SB 50.
“The Supreme Court ruling changed what states are allowed to do. It did not change what Maryland has chosen to do.”
A few facts worth keeping straight:
- Maryland is one of 15 states that still allow transgender participation in school sports, either by statute or athletic-association policy.
- The June 30 Supreme Court ruling applies directly only to Idaho and West Virginia’s laws, but is expected to affect similar bans already on the books in other states.
- Maryland’s transgender-inclusive sports guidance predates the current legal fight by more than a decade.
- This year’s bills mark the fifth consecutive year such legislation has failed to reach a floor vote in Annapolis.
None of this guarantees Maryland’s policy stays put. The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t just uphold two state bans; it rejected the constitutional challenges brought against the West Virginia and Idaho laws and substantially strengthened the legal footing for similar state restrictions.
Sources: U.S. Supreme Court, West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), 609 U.S. ___ (2026), decided June 30, 2026; Maryland General Assembly, Senate Bill 50 and House Bill 63 (2026 Regular Session), bill status pages and Department of Legislative Services fiscal and policy notes, mgaleg.maryland.gov; written committee testimony from the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland and Trans Maryland, submitted February 2026; Montgomery County Public Schools transgender athletics guidance; CBS News Texas, ESPN, and Yahoo Sports reporting on Sophie Cunningham’s July 2026 comments and the resulting WNBA rallies and controversies; Fox News reporting on the February 2026 Maryland Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus sign dispute; Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association guidance language as quoted in official 2026 legislative fiscal notes.
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