The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to uphold state laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls' and women's sports, wading for the first time into the contentious issue. The justices heard more than three hours of arguments in a pair of cases challenging laws from West Virginia and Idaho that require public school and collegiate sports teams to be designated based on biological sex at birth and restrict transgender girls and women from competing on teams that correspond with their gender identity.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems likely to uphold state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams after arguments Tuesday on two cases pertaining to students at the K-...

The Idaho case to be heard by the nine justices stems from the Republican-led state’s 2020 “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”