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Now, Supreme Court Releasing Opinions; Supreme Court Rules on Transgender Sports Bans; Supreme Court Backs GOP-Lead Effort to Lift Campaign Spending Caps. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 30, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:00:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: At any moment now, the United States Supreme Court will hand down major opinions. And because this is the final day of the term, we know exactly which cases will be defined in the next few minutes.

The biggest of this blockbuster term, President Trump's challenge to what's called birthright citizenship. More than a century of legal precedent has said that babies born on U.S. soil are automatically American citizens regardless of their parents' citizenship status. The president wants to eliminate that.

And the court has to release its opinion on transgender sports bans as well, and that will happen soon, specifically if states have the authority to ban transgender students from playing on girls' sports team.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. Pamela Brown is outside the United States Supreme Court, and you're in The Situation Room.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Very big day here at the Supreme Court, the final day of decisions, and we're watching a couple of big cases. First is birthright citizenship. President Trump tried to end that with an executive order on his first day back in office last year, trying to overturn what has been understood as an American tradition and in the Constitution for more than a century.

When the case was brought to the Supreme Court in April, justices, they seemed skeptical during oral arguments. Many constitutional scholars say birthright is protected by the Constitution. That means if someone is born here in the United States, they are a U.S. citizen with few exceptions. Many analysts are predicting a major defeat for the administration.

And then we have the transgender sports cases, more than two dozen states currently restrict or ban transgender athletes from playing on girls' sports teams. Several conservative justices leaned into language and themes that may suggest a willingness to support the bans. We've seen the Supreme Court in several cases rule against transgender Americans, and that is really the case we are expecting first here at the high court.

I want to go to our Legal Affairs Correspondent -- Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid for more. Paula?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Okay, Pamela. I've been on the phone with our team. The way this works is the opinions are released back there at the Supreme Court. Our colleagues are telling us on the phone, we just got the physical opinion. But based on our conversation with our team inside, we just got a really important case about transgender athletes in student sports. And it does appear that here the Supreme Court says that states can bar transgender students from playing on girls' sports teams. So, this is expected based on what we saw in oral argument, but it's the latest in a series of defeats for trans Americans amid political backlash, especially in conservative states.

Now, this is significant because roughly half of the states in this country have similar laws. But this is one of the big cases that we've been watching. We just got it. We didn't have a chance to go all the way through it, but it does appear that the Supreme Court is allowing states to ban athletes from playing -- transgender athletes from playing in girls' sports.

BROWN: Yes. And as I mentioned, you know, this, in many ways, is not a surprise given this high court. It has ruled against transgender care for minors. It has ruled in favor of the Trump administration when it comes to banning transgender people in the military, requiring birth sex on passports. Now, as you just reported, they're upholding these state bans or restrictions on transgender athletes playing.

And also there's a political element of this. Of course, this is an issue that is enmeshed in the culture wars in America, even though a very small percentage of Americans are transgender.

REID: That's exactly right. And the way this case came before the court, there were a pair of cases, one from West Virginia, one from Idaho. West Virginia one dealt with high school sports. The Idaho case dealt with a college athlete. And this case coming before the Supreme Court at this time, again, we watched an oral argument. It did not appear that they were going to be able to rule that these laws are unconstitutional based on the questions the justices were asking. So, this is a significant case.

This is, again, one of the biggest culture war cases that we're seeing, but we still have about three more cases that we're waiting for. So, I'm going to jump back on our call and see what we get next.

BROWN: Okay. You jump back. I'm going to toss it back over to you, Wolf, as we wait for other opinions to come down.

BLITZER: All right. Major decisions about to be made public, and we're standing by for that.

[10:05:00]

Thanks very much. We're watching all of this together with our legal and political analysts as all these dramatic developments unfold. Laura Coates is with us right now.

Laura, you're our chief legal correspondent -- legal analyst right now. Give us your sense on this decision that we just heard on transgender sports.

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: This is a monumental decision, not unexpected, however, given how the oral arguments went. Here was the crux of the issue. It was whether or not somebody who was assigned the male gender at birth would be allowed to play in a traditionally so-called girl's sports in a public or high school or, of course, in the college setting.

The argument that they were using to support a ban was that there was an unfair advantage provided to those assigned male at birth in women's competition. The other side said, no, no, this is sex-based discrimination, and it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and therefore, you cannot do it.

This has been, as Pamela said, at the heart of many culture wars, and one about what the unfair advantage may be and whether or not gender identity should be included in a sex discrimination case and otherwise. The courts seemed, at the onset, to be leaning towards this outcome anyway, but the fact that it has now happened, we have 27 or more states, I believe, who had this ban different colleges, and the NCAA applies it differently to each and every type of sport.

And so you had the potential for a patchwork system as opposed to a workable framework that would be consistent across the board.

BLITZER: Yes, so this is a pretty dramatic decision that was just announced as, as well.

I want to bring in our Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, and Cully Stimson, acting director for the Institute for Constitutional Government over at the Heritage Foundation here in Washington. What do you think?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the first thing that is important to understand, this is not a nationwide ban on transgender athletes participating in girls' and women's sports. This ruling simply says that if states choose to pass their own state laws that ban transgender athletes, they can do that. About half the states in the nation have done that. Those laws will survive.

The other thing is the law basically says -- the law at issue here is Title IX, as Laura was saying. Title IX allows discrimination on the basis of sex when it comes to sports. You are allowed to have leagues that are just for girls or just for boys or women or men. And the crux of this decision is that it is permissible, constitutionally permissible, to make those distinctions based on biological sex at birth and not on a person's gender identity later on in life. So that's the crux of this decision, a major decision, but it will leave it up to states on a state-by-state basis. BLITZER: Cully, what do you, how do you see it?

CULLY STIMSON, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY FOR D.C.: I would agree with Elie. The only couple things I would add is the plaintiffs here argue not only Title IX, but Title VII, all right? And the court clearly rejected the Title VII argument. That's employment discrimination. And on Title IX, they to- they point out in the majority opinion that the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees, the International Olympic Committee itself has this type of ban on biological men participating in women's sports.

And so Elie's right, this will really go back to the states to decide whether or not, again, they're going to use this type of ban to ban biological men from girls' sports. So, I'm not surprised.

I am surprised about the lineup, because you didn't have the traditional 6-3 lineup here. You have the so-called liberals in the court actually agreeing in part and then dissenting in part in the opinion. And so as we read through that, I think we're going to find some good nuggets.

BLITZER: What do you think on that lineup?

HONIG: Yes, we've seen a lot of 6-3 outcomes. We've actually rarely seen the three liberals join over on a conservative outcome. So, we're trying to parse through exactly what they've done, the three liberals, is file a concurrence in part, meaning we agree with the primary decision in part, but also a dissent in part, meaning we disagree with some of it. That's at the very end. I haven't got to that yet.

BLITZER: What's going to be the practical impact of this Supreme Court decision on young girls and boys and sports in the United States?

HONIG: Well, two things. One, existing state laws in -- I think it's 27 states that ban transgender athletes from participating in women and girls' sports, those laws stand. And so in those states, everyone should know the law of their own state, transgender athletes cannot participate in women and girls' sports.

The other thing is, a secondary effect, it could lead other states that are considering this type of legislation to say, okay, now we have a green light from the Supreme Court, and they do have a green light. And so wouldn't surprise me to see more states going down this road now that the legal question has been answered.

What do you think about the practical impact?

STIMSON: I think dads like me who have daughters who are athletes are happy, and moms, because my daughter's a great athlete. A lot of dads and moms out there that have great athletes who are daughters, I don't want them competing against biological men. I just think it's dangerous. You know, the majority opinion points out the differences between men and women biologically, they quote from the IOC.

But I think, you know, again, I think to Elie's point, other states who are on the sidelines here may then have to reengage here to decide whether or not they want to pass this law or not.

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The ratchet could work the other way. They could -- some states who have passed these laws could decide not to. I doubt it, but this, again, puts the ball back in the state's court.

COATES: You know, interesting too, Wolf, this is such a culture war issue, and you've actually just hit the nail on the head in terms of what the conversations have been about. But it's also more than just the consummate blue ribbon at the end of the day or crossing the finish line. Our college sports and our high school sports programs are often stair steps to financial gain, even for young kids at this age. NIL deals, of course, booming in ways they had never done before.

And so at some point in time, the transgender athlete debate was about fair play. Now, it's about competitive advantage that can actually have a financial hook as well. And we've seen some of the Supreme Court just as recently as yesterday, how the economy and money making the world go round can often impact the way that the court will see a particular issue in that competitive spirit.

But make no mistake about it, there will be those who will look at this decision and they will apply it in a much more universal way on all the political culture wars about transgender people broadly as opposed to what this nuanced issue has been about in terms of how this can be used sport to sport in the NCAA and at the high school level.

And, again, it is important to keep in mind that the NCAA allows different changes for different sports. The primary ones people have been talking about, tennis, swimming, have been the big ones, track as well, all sports that are coming up, of course, in the Olympics. And you can see the international impact of this because, just as recently as the last Olympics, there were conversations about genetic testing to determine one's identity assigned at birth because this has become an international issue.

It's not just the state levels having different issues. You can expect different nations to look at what the Supreme Court has done here and decide what to do next.

BLITZER: I want to pick up on that. I want to bring in Christine Brennan right now, CNN sports analyst, sports columnist for USA Today. Christine, put today's ruling on this very important issue in perspective.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: Wolf, this is the way the world has been going. And when I say the world, Laura was just talking about the Olympics and other international sports, back in 2023, swimming, the International Federation for Swimming, one of the biggest sports in the Olympics, and the International Federation for Track and Field. This was when Joe Biden was president, had nothing to do with the U.S., it had everything to do with worldwide sports. Both swimming and athletics, track and field said if you have gone through male puberty, you cannot compete in the Olympics. So, if you watched the Paris Olympics in 2024, as many, many millions did that rule was already in place then. It is absolutely a trend we have seen in sports. Once Donald Trump became president, his executive order within a couple weeks of taking office, the NCAA then, of course, banned transgender female athletes from competing. Then you saw the LPGA, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. And just recently back in March, the International Olympic Committee said the same thing.

And so this has been the way this conversation has been going internationally, and, of course, with Donald Trump as president, then nationally. So, I think that it will continue to be -- I think we're going to see this exact trend continue, to be honest, because it seems to be the way the international sports world is going, and the national sports world.

BLITZER: What are the broader implications, Christine, on the world of sports and for inclusion in sports for high school, college, and indeed beyond, for example, the WNBA?

BRENNAN: You know, Wolf, we, in, in my answer to you just now it was we're basically talking elite athletes. But the International Olympic Committee, led for the first time ever by a woman, Kirsty Coventry, a two-time Olympic swimming gold medalist, said that their ruling about transgender women in sports, banning it back in March, Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president, said that did not involve grassroots or organizational, in other words youth sports.

And so she made the point, the International Olympic Committee, which is the biggest other than I guess FIFA in terms of the worldwide of all sports around, you know, with the Olympics and with international sport as the fiefdom that it has, that has -- they made that clear, they want kids to be able to play sports.

And almost everyone I talked to in this conversation, which is your panelists, said it's incredibly fraught, and it's political, and it's supercharged. It's got -- it's everything, right? Most people, even if they want to ban transgender female athletes, talk about getting kids to play sports. You think of your kids and grandkids, all of our kids, nieces, nephews, the girl next door, the boy next door that you wave at as they load their sports bag in the car. You don't want to stop that from happening.

And the leaders on this issue, by and large, in the sports world know that.

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They do not want to tell a kid five, six, seven years old, who may believe that they are not what their biological sex is, that they can't play sports. You want them to play sports. You want to make sure they're included for their safety, their health, their physical health, their mental health, et cetera.

This is now the needle that the sports world is going to thread to make sure they do not exclude children well before the elite level from the opportunity to learn those life lessons playing sports.

BLITZER: Are there other long-term national consequences, Christine, of this major U.S. Supreme Court decision?

BRENNAN: As I said, Wolf, this has been the way that this conversation has been going as long as I've covered it over the last, you know, five, six, seven years. There's definitely been a turn and a change. And you know where this happened. I think the visuals of Lia Thomas, the Penn swimmer, of course, who competed and won all those awards and NCAA championship, and then after Donald Trump's executive order, those were wiped from the books by Penn once the NCAA's went along with what Trump said. I think that we saw the nation seeing what that looked like with Lia Thomas and the incredible distance between her and others on those videos, I think, changes conversation, for sure.

So, you know, moving forward, the bottom line, Charlie Baker, Wolf, the NCAA president, has said out of the half million NCAA athletes, division one, two, and three, he estimated that there are only ten or even less than ten who were transgender, so less than ten out of a half million. And then, you know, without -- with the Olympics themselves, we don't know of any transgender athletes who competed in Paris at the 2024 Olympics. One transgender woman competed in Tokyo in 2021 did not medal. And so we're talking about a very, very small group of people. And I think that's something that should be mentioned here as we move forward.

So, will there be ramifications? I know your panelists talked about what other states will do in the political world. Looking at it from -- with the lens of sports, it seems to me that most people would be expecting this. Leaders have been expecting this. Many have been fighting for it based on their scientific surveys, talking to doctors, medical officials, whatever. So, if that's the case, if they have been preparing for it, now they know it's happened. And I would think many more states then will ban transgender athletes in high school.

Again, the key question for all of those officials, how do you keep those kids involved in sports? How do you give them the opportunity to play, to learn those life lessons, to have not only their physical health but their mental health be enhanced because they can play sports?

BLITZER: Good points indeed. All right, Christine Brennan, as usual, thank you very, very much. Stay with us. We're going to be continuing this conversation later.

Right now, I want to bring in West Virginia's Attorney General J.B. McCuskey. Attorney General, thanks very much for joining us. I know your state of West Virginia argued its policy to ban transgender athletes is necessary to protect the integrity of female sports. So, first of all, what's your reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling today?

J.B. MCCUSKEY (R), WEST VIRGINIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Yes. First of all, I need to say thank you to my team of lawyers Michael Williams and Holly Wilson, who truly did yeoman's work here. On this very channel, I predicted that this might be a 9-0 case. I was sort of chuckled at, and what we now know is that on the Title IX decision, we are at 9-0. And on the 6-3 side of the equal protection, the justices were very measured, the liberal justices, in discussing how this case hadn't been factually developed enough.

And so this is really a huge victory for common sense. It's a huge victory for female sports. And I would take just a little tiny bit of umbrage with how you describe that. This is not a ban on transgender athletes playing sports. This is a ban on biological men playing sports against biological women.

And so to your earlier panelist's sort of commentary there, the way that this is going to work is that kids are going to play on the sports team with the biological gender that they were assigned at birth. And we are going to make sure that every single kid has access to the incredibly life-changing aspects that competitive sports give us.

And I think the word competitive sports is really important there. This isn't about participation trophy sports. This is about sports where kids get up every single day, they work their rear end off, and they try their absolute hardest to either get a college scholarship, to win the state championship, to do whatever it is, but it's binary. And you can lose at these sports. And sometimes these kids learn more about losing when losing is done fairly than they do from winning.

And so we are just astronomically proud of the work that West Virginia and Idaho have done here. I'm astronomically proud of my team.

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And we feel very, very strongly that this is a huge victory for common sense, and the numbers that we see from the justices really bear that out.

BLITZER: The case, Attorney General, also puts a spotlight on Title IX which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal money. Your state argued it was originally meant to protect opportunities for biological girls. So, what does today's ruling mean for the future of Title IX?

MCCUSKEY: Yes. So, we correctly argued that. And what this says is that Title IX -- and it's a little bit of a historical look-back too. Part of this that's so important to remember is the incredible success that Title IX has had. You know, I'm the father of two girls who both play sports. I actually was just at the national regional tournament with my daughter for soccer, and little old West Virginia held their own in a very big way against New York and New Jersey and Virginia and Pennsylvania and these giant clubs.

And watching these girls, watching the opportunities that Title IX has provided for my daughters really gave me a glimpse into what it was probably like for my mom, for women who grew up in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, where there was this inherent sexism that was preventing women from playing sports, from going to college. And then when Title IX came along, what we've seen is this explosion of women into the boardrooms of big international companies and into the highest offices in the halls of Congress and in the government. And so much of that is a result of the very well-defined and very well-delineated laws that Title IX created giving women these opportunities.

And so I am incredibly proud to have stood up for what Title IX means, to have stood up for the historical precedent that Title IX set, and to stood up for women and girls all over this country who are going to use Title IX and who have used Title IX to become incredibly successful and what is importantly equal members of our society, which they were not for a very long time.

BLITZER: Your state brought this case before the Supreme Court. What do you think, Attorney General, what are the potential nationwide ripple effects because of today's ruling?

MCCUSKEY: I think because of the fact that three -- all three liberal justices agreed with us on Title IX and the very measured approach that they took to the Equal Protection Clause portion of this argument, I think you're going to see states that haven't implemented laws similar to West Virginia's Save Women's Sports Act really start to think twice about what is -- what are we trying to do with youth sports? What do we need to be doing to make sure that there is a fair playing field? And what is the American culture saying about how fairness and competitive sports should be oriented?

And so I think what you're going to see is a lot of states that really think twice about not having a Save Women's Sports Act, and you're going to see a lot of states that you wouldn't expect going back in and saying, you know what? This is the right pathway forward. This is the best way to make sure that women and girls, and transgender athletes, have appropriate places to play that is fair and competitive and enables children to learn all these incredible lessons that we've been talking about.

BLITZER: The West Virginia attorney general, J.B. McCuskey, Attorney General, thanks so much for joining us.

MCCUSKEY: Thank you for having me.

BLITZER: And the lawyer for the plaintiffs is going to be joining us in The Situation Room. That's coming up. Our special coverage from the Supreme Court will continue right after a very quick break.

We'll be right back.

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BROWN: And welcome back. We're here in front of the Supreme Court, and we just got a big opinion on campaign finance that could have big implications on elections, particularly ahead of this year's midterms. Paula? REID: Yes, Pamela. This is a huge case. Here, the Supreme Court is lifting the caps that have been in place since around the Watergate era in terms of how much money that campaigns, so political parties, can spend in conjunction with candidates.

So, this is significant because this lawsuit was brought by then- Senate Candidate J.D. Vance, and the question is, are these limits, are these caps on how much money you can spend in coordination with a candidate, are these constitutional? Is this a violation of the First Amendment? And as we've seen over the past decade since Citizens United, the Supreme Court has sort of consistently been rolling back some of these limits on campaign spending.

But this could have an enormous impact in upcoming elections because we know that even before this decision was handed down, Republicans have already entered this election year with a substantial financial advantage over Democrats.

Now, I would expect that folks watching at home, you can expect to see a flood of political commercials from between now, the midterms, the next few elections. They're going to find ways to take advantage of this and to spend more freely with candidates. So, this is an incredibly significant decision. Clear now why they waited until the last day. This was a 6-3 opinion divided along ideological lines, and this was written by Justice Kavanaugh.

BROWN: Okay. So, bottom line this goes back to the First Amendment, right? The money is speech. And now the Supreme Court is essentially saying that political candidates can coordinate with political groups rather than spend money independently.

REID: Exactly. Political parties have been limited, again, it's around the 1970s, in terms of how much money they can spend in direct coordination with a candidate. And then-Senate Candidate J.D. Vance, he was part of challenging that, and it was a First Amendment argument, as you said. And here, the Supreme Court once again rolling back these restrictions on campaign spending, and this is something that will disproportionately, we expect, benefit the Republicans. Because as we've seen when Democrats have been able to outraise Republicans, they've done so through sort of grassroots, through smaller donor dollars.

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This will help sort of a flood of money come into the GOP.

BROWN: All right. Wolf legal and political implications here.

BLITZER: Major decision, another major decision.