Attorney General Knudsen issues statement on SCOTUS decision protecting women’s rights

HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen issued the following statement Tuesday following the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, which will protect women in the locker room and keep competition fair in women’s sporting events.

“Today, we celebrate a huge victory for women’s and girls’ rights and safety in Montana and across the country. The laws affirmed today are common sense: men should not be allowed in women’s locker rooms or to compete in women’s sports. My hope is that moving forward women and girls can feel safe in the locker room and have the opportunity to participate in fair competitions, just as Title IX and generations of women before them fought for and intended. I will continue to do everything I can to protect women’s rights and defend Title IX as Attorney General.”

Attorney General Knudsen joined two briefs in defense of laws passed in West Virginia and Idaho to protect women’s rights. West Virginia’s law required athletic teams to be designated based on biological sex at birth and bans boys from playing in girls’ sports. Idaho’s law banned transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. In January, he was at the Supreme Court when oral arguments were presented to support the protection of women’s rights.

Attorney General Knudsen defends women’s rights at Supreme Court rally on January 13, 2026.

Attorney General Knudsen has led the charge to protect women and defend Title IX. In 2021, the Montana State Legislature passed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” that banned men from participating in girls’ sports. His office defended the law, but the Montana Supreme Court ruled it’s unconstitutional to apply that law to universities.

During his first term as Attorney General, he fought the Biden administration’s war on Title IX and women’s rights, which put the safety of girls at risk. In 2024, he was granted a preliminary injunction after he sued the Biden administration over an unlawful Title IX rule that would have prohibited schools from distinguishing between males and females in athletic and educational opportunities.

He also fought against the Biden administrations attempt to put federal funding at risk if states didn’t adopt his radical gender ideology – from school lunch programs to Medicaid. He defended women against Biden’s rules that walked back years of progress in sports and threatened the safety of girls by undermining equal access to athletics which redefined “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity” which ignored science and undid the longstanding definition of biological sex.