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When legislators started hearing that men were competing in girls’ sports, they acted. Twenty-seven states passed laws that said, in effect: Not on my watch. Our girls have equal opportunity, and they will not be sidelined in their own sports. But a federal bill now moving through Congress could undo what those legislators, and the girls who stood up alongside them, fought to win.
At Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), we have been in the thick of that fight for the better part of a decade. We stood beside our client, Selina Soule, and her Connecticut teammates as they were forced to race against males and watched 15 girls’ state titles handed to male competitors. Theirs was the first lawsuit of many.
We celebrated as President Donald Trump signed a groundbreaking executive order recognizing the biological truth of male and female and directing the federal government to keep men out of women’s sports.
THE “PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT” HAS A FATAL FLAW: IT DOESN’T PROTECT WOMEN | RILEY GAINES
And most recently, alongside Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, we represented three female athletes in Idaho and West Virginia whose cases reached the Supreme Court. On June 30, we won. The Supreme Court upheld both states’ laws and confirmed what most Americans already know: an athlete’s sex matters, and states can keep girls’ sports for girls.
But that win came only after years of devastating losses. In West Virginia alone, one boy displaced over 470 girls more than 1,400 times, including by taking a state championship. We know this terrain because we have walked it, legislature by legislature, courtroom by courtroom, for years.
So when I raise concerns about the Protect College Sports Act’s potential effect on state laws protecting women’s sports, I do so as someone who has helped litigate these cases, not as someone watching from the stands.
I have spent a legal career watching lawyers seize on every ambiguous phrase they can find. Twenty years ago, no one thought we would need to define what a woman is.
I do not doubt that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his co-sponsors want to protect the integrity of college sports. But good intentions don’t win lawsuits. Precise language does. And the language in this bill, as written, is loose enough for an enterprising judge to make all sorts of mischief. It also gives far too much power to the NCAA, which has betrayed women and girls for years.
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The Protect College Sports Act, a bill about NIL deals and player transfers, sets general nationwide collegiate eligibility rules and then limits the ability of states to address eligibility. Yet many of the state sports laws say that sex-based classifications implicate eligibility and declare men ineligible for women’s teams. A hostile administration or an activist judge could twist the bill’s language to argue that every state law that keeps men out of women’s sports is unenforceable. The bill also doesn’t fully safeguard Title IX—which authorizes separate teams, locker rooms and showers for girls.
At ADF, we’ve been warning Congress about the unnecessary risk posed by this bill for weeks. We’ve even offered a simple fix that would minimize the risk of undoing women’s sports laws. And time and again, our solution has been ignored.
It almost seems as if this is just another instance of society prioritizing men over women. The bill’s main purpose is to fix the money and chaos in the men’s games, especially football, where the dollars are. That is what its sponsors care to fix. Whether the fix endangers girls is not the highest priority. Once again, when men’s and women’s interests share a page, the women’s side absorbs the risk.
None of that is what the bill’s drafters intend. But intent is not what a court enforces, and I have spent a legal career watching lawyers seize on every ambiguous phrase they can find. Twenty years ago, no one thought we would need to define what a woman is.
There is no room for ambiguity. When the stakes are our daughters’ rights on the field and in the locker room, “probably fine” is not good enough. Having fought these battles, I know how the sequel ends: back in court for another decade, defending ground we already won, while female athletes pay the price.
The rights of girls should not depend on how some future court chooses to read a sentence Congress left unclear. Nearly eight in 10 Americans agree that men do not belong in women’s sports. That is not a fringe position, and it is no longer a partisan one. Truth does not have a party affiliation, and fairness for female athletes never should.
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The fix is simple: tighten the language to unambiguously ensure that state women’s sports laws are not preempted and that Title IX remains untouched. Sponsors can address athlete compensation while ensuring states can keep men out of women’s sports. Those goals are not in tension. Until Congress passes a bill that protects women’s sports in all 50 states, it should make sure that no legislation undermines the 27 states with the courage to act—and that the defenders of women’s sports remain free to make the case that the other 23 should follow.
We just won a landmark ruling for women and girls. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot by handing the other side a tool we know they will misuse. Let’s not enact permanent legislation that unravels the Trump administration’s work to defend biological truth in sports or ignites another round of costly litigation pushing for men to compete in women’s sports.
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A bill that claims to protect sports should protect the girls who play them. Clean up the language by making it clear the law doesn’t preempt state laws that keep men out of women’s sports. Don’t force us to bear the risk of losing the ground we’ve gained.
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