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The U.S. Supreme Court ended its term Monday ignoring a bid by state officials to strike down a federal court ruling upholding a preliminary injunction that bars Arizona from enforcing a 2022 law.

Dubbed the Save Women’s Sports Act by the Republican-controlled Legislature, the Arizona law spells out that teams designated for women or girls “may not be open to students of the male sex.’’ And by “sex,’’ the law means the one assigned at birth based on a baby’s sex organs.

But Monday’s inaction by the nation’s high court may not be the last word.

The justices could decide as early as Thursday whether they want to hear legal arguments from state officials seeking to overturn lower court rulings voiding such laws when their new term begins in October, from not just Arizona but also from Idaho and West Virginia. Or they could simply decide to let stand lower court rulings against the states.

For the moment, though, the two transgender girls in Arizona who sued over the law continue to be eligible to play on girls’ teams. At the time they sued in 2023, one was at The Gregory School in Tucson and the other at Kyrene Aprende Middle School in Chandler.

Background of the Arizona law

The 2022 law is based on the argument that males have an inherent strength edge over females. According to the law’s proponents, that makes it unfair for those who were born as boys to compete against biological girls.

The law overruled what had been the practice of the Arizona Interscholastic Association to allow transgender girls to participate in girls sports only after getting approval of a committee of medical and psychiatric experts to determine if permission was sought for an improper purpose.

That approval was rare: According to court records, in the decade prior to the litigation, the AIA fielded just 12 requests from transgender students seeking to play on teams consistent with their gender identity — and approved just seven. That’s out of about 170,000 students who play sports in Arizona each year.

Seeking to avoid the debate about physical strength, the lawsuit filed in 2023 involved two transgender girls who, according to their lawyers, had not yet entered puberty and had been taking puberty blockers.

U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Zipps ruled the law should not be enforced against them. In entering a preliminary injunction, she said the two have “athletic capabilities like other girls their age’’ and would find playing on a boys’ team “humiliating and embarrassing.’’

Appellate ruling

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

Appellate Judge Morgan Christen, writing for the court, said the ban does not consider individual circumstances. It covers kindergarten through graduate school and all sports, including intramural games, regardless of whether physical contact is involved, the judge noted.

“Significantly, the ban turns entirely on a student’s transgender or cisgender status, and not at all on other factors like levels of circulating testosterone,’’ Christen wrote.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, who is defending the law, has argued there is justification for a blanket rule versus a case-by-case basis.

“If you watch kids on the playground, the third graders, the boys are going to do better at athletics than the girls,’’ said Horne, an elected Republican. “What the data show is that even prepubescent boys have an advantage over girls. In fact, any elementary school gym teacher will tell you that.’’

Christen, in the 9th Circuit ruling, acknowledged that Horne cited “a handful of studies’’ suggesting that prepubescent boys may be taller, have more muscle mass, less body fat or have greater shoulder internal rotator strength than prepubescent girls.

“These students, however, neither attributed these differences to biological rather than sociological factors nor concluded that these differences translated into competitive academic advantages,’’ Christen wrote. Sociological factors, the court found, include greater societal encouragement of athleticism in boys, greater opportunities for boys to play sports, or differences in the preferences of boys and girls surveyed.

The judge said other studies cited by Horne are flawed, as well.

Discrimination finding

Christen also noted that the way the Arizona law is worded, it allows other students — women, girls, cisgender men and boys, and transgender men and boys — to participate in sports that correspond with their gender identities.

“Only transgender women and girls are barred from doing so,’’ she wrote. “The act discriminates on its face based on transgender status.’’

That 9th Circuit ruling awaits a decision by the Supreme Court on whether the justices want to review it.

Rachel Berg, one of the attorneys representing the transgender girls, said there’s a good reason the high court should not get involved, at least at this point. She said the justices should wait for a final ruling by Zipps on whether to permanently block the 2022 law.

That case has been fully briefed but there is no specific date for a ruling.

The debate before the high court comes on the heels of its ruling that Tennessee is free to bar gender-affirming medical care for minors, such as hormone treatment. In that case, the majority concluded the Tennessee law was about regulating the practice of medicine, not sex discrimination.

But in a new court filing last week, lawyers for the two Arizona girls told Zipps that ruling should have no effect on what she decides. At least one reason is that there’s a significant difference in the Arizona case: It is based, at least in part, on claims that Arizona lawmakers, in enacting the 2022 law, “acted with discriminatory intent,’’ a factor not in the Tennessee case.

A finding of an improper motive could prove crucial.

The Supreme Court, in an earlier ruling, agreed to allow the attorneys for the transgender girls to question under oath both Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and former House Speaker Ben Toma. The high court also agreed with an order by Zipps to require Petersen and Toma to surrender documents in their possession about the enactment of the law.

Those depositions and documents, which could help Zipps decide if illegal discrimination was behind the 2022 law, currently remain sealed.