#Save Women’s Sports: Good News Roundup (Part 1)
Trans-Related Title IX Updates
Hi friends and welcome newcomers!
Note: I added links to the Stronger Women home page to make it easy for you to find the main topics. See the top ribbon for collected stories about 1) #Save Women’s Sports (like this one) and 2) #Aging Up (older female athletes).
“How could anyone think female athletes would not fight back?”
– , Olympic swimming champion; Title IX attorney; CEO, Champion Women
We might be winning.
By “we,” I mean the pro-female-athletes team. The “Go female athletes!” team.
By “winning,” I mean restricting female sports to girls and women. That’s the goal: to reclaim the female category. To ensure that girls and women have female-only opportunities in schools, colleges, professional sports, recreational sports, Olympic sports.1 All sports. All ages. Worldwide.
If we do win, the boys and men who identify as transwomen, transgirls, non-binary, transfem, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, genderqueer, or anything else (there are 5,000+ gender identities so far) would not be banned from playing sports. No one is proposing banning anyone from sports, despite what you might have read.
Trans-identified male athletes who dress “like women”2 (77%, according to a Washington Post survey)3 or adopt women’s names (57%) could play in the male category. That’s what the male category is for: all sorts of males.
Male performance advantages cannot be erased via testosterone suppression (just 31% take medication) — or surgery (just 16% have surgery).45
Restricting the female category to girls and women is appropriate because sports are not organized based on beliefs or identities, but on bodies.
Male bodies are bigger, faster, and stronger than women’s bodies – as I’ve explained here, here, here, and here, and as you surely notice simply by looking around. This is less obvious in children, but boys have a physical advantage then, too, as proven by one hundred years of swimming and running records.
Restoring Title IX to its intent – see below – will impact only American educational institutions. It will not affect the Olympics — or recreational sports, where males are taking thousands of trophies from women.
Still, there are recent developments that constitute good news: too many to list here (fortunately). So this is the first in a series.
Today I’ll provide important legal and political updates in plain language.
New Legal Rulings Preserve Female Sports and Spaces
On January 9, a federal judge in Kentucky struck down President Biden’s rules that added “gender identity” to Title IX protections. This is good news for female athletes because it restores Title IX to its purpose: requiring equal opportunities for girls and women in federally funded educational institutions. The addition of gender-identity protections would have forced schools and colleges to admit boys and men to girls’ and women’s restrooms and showers and would have mandated teachers’ use of students’ preferred pronouns.
“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex,” wrote Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky. “Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.”
However, this is bad news for lesbians, gay men, pregnant women, and sexual abuse survivors, who would have received new protections. It’s one of many times when attempts to hitch the weighty and problematic T to the fragile LGB-rights wagon has damaged the entire caravan.
No one is banning anyone from sports.
The Biden administration had already withdrawn the separate, sports-specific, proposed Title IX rules in December after a public outcry that included lawsuits by 26 states and an unprecedented 160,000 public comments. The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG), of which I am a member — along with
Navratilova, , , , and — also submitted comments.The judge’s nail-in-the-coffin decision, coming weeks before the Republicans claim control of Congress and the White House, kills Democrats’ misguided efforts to replace sex-based rights with “gender identity” rights.
Remember: No one is banning anyone from sports. Allowing male athletes to play on girls’ and women’s teams deprives girls and women of opportunities and fairness.
Title IX Restoration Bills Heading to Congress
“I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports,” Rep. Tom Suozzi told the New York Times. “Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”
Republicans in the House and the Senate are expected to reintroduce The Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act soon. Both versions would enshrine Title IX’s original meaning into law, making it harder for future presidents to undermine it with administrative rules. The bills forbid “a person whose sex is male” from participating in athletic programs designated for women or girls. Sex is “recognized solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
That’s about all the bills say. They’re very brief. They do not address restrooms or locker rooms (but should).
The House version also allows males to practice or train in a women’s sports program “so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the program or activity.” This phrase is nearly identical to model legislation the WSPWG has proposed.
Male Practice Players
Many college coaches already invite what are known as “male practice players” to join women’s teams during practice. The men are former high school or recreational athletes who are not good enough to make the men’s team but can challenge the women – because males are bigger, faster, stronger.
This has been happening since at least the late 1970s, when I was at Stanford. My coaches recruited male students to scrimmage against us (because they could run faster) and, in my case, to give me experience shooting over taller opponents (at six-one, I was the tallest woman on my team). (Women were shorter back then!)
In contact sports, to avoid risking injury to the women, these players must follow rules such as no physical contact or aggressive rebounding. Males who identify as trans might be in these roles already, and could certainly join the ranks of male practice players under this version of this bill.
The Largest, Most Ideologically Diverse Women's Movement of Our Time
So far, two Democratic House members (Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tom Suozzi of New York) have openly supported female athletes. “I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports,” Suozzi told the New York Times. “Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”
As a lifelong Democrat, I agree. Democrats, who have historically supported women in general and Title IX in particular, should resume their support for female athletes, transforming this into a nonpartisan issue.
Meanwhile, Republicans, who have historically opposed Title IX, are now advocating for female athletes. Bipartisan coalitions have emerged, including Our Bodies, Our Sports, which characterizes this effort as “the largest, most ideologically diverse women's movement of our time” and the International Consortium on Female Sport. Outspoken athletes range from progressive feminist Martina Navratilova to conservative Christian Riley Gaines.
In a new poll, 78 percent of parents across the political spectrum expressed the opinion that “males who identify as female” should not be allowed to participate on girls’ sports teams. This was overwhelmingly true for Republicans (86%) and also true for most Democrats (60%).
Along with a 2023 poll showing growing support for athletes’ rights to all-female sports, I see this as an encouraging trend that just might help lawmakers unite to save women’s sports.
Selected Stronger Women essays about the need for female-only sports:
Coed sports are fine when women choose to play with men. In rare cases such as equestrian, there is no female category because the primary athlete is the horse.
What does it mean to dress like a woman? Is it possible to do that without adopting stereotypically female clothing, makeup, hairstyles, and behavior? Have you ever heard of a boy who “feels like a girl” yet prefers the jeans, t-shirts, and soccer cleats many actual girls prefer? Why not? Because gender identities are based on old-fashioned stereotypes that feminists had hoped to eradicate decades ago.
Annys Shin, “6 Key Takeaways from the Post-KFF Survey of Transgender Americans,” Washington Post, March 22, 2023.
Greg Brown, “Males and Females Are Different and That Matters in Sports!” October 2, 2024.
Our Position: “Female Sports Are for Female Athletes,” Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, May 24, 2024.
"However, this is bad news for lesbians, gay men, pregnant women, and sexual abuse survivors, who would have received new protections. It’s one of many times when attempts to hitch the weighty and problematic T to the fragile LGB-rights wagon has damaged the entire caravan."
THANK-YOU for not overlooking this.
Great round-up! Heads up, the House may be voting as early as tomorrow (Tuesday) on the Sports bill. Below is sample text to contact your House member to urge them to vote yes:
The House bill text is here: https://steube.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-01-03-Protection-of-Women-and-Girls-in-Sports-Act-Text.pdf
Sample text:
Subject: Vote Yes on H.R. 28, “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025”
Dear [Representative]:
I am your constituent and a lifelong Democrat. I write to urge you in the strongest possible terms to vote YES on H.R. 28, ”Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025,” to secure the opportunity for safe and fair sports for girls and women that Title IX was enacted to guarantee.
Safe and fair athletic competition for girls and women was the clear goal of Title IX. That goal has been severely undermined: among other things, to date, almost 6,000 sports top three finishes have been by boys and men who were allowed entry into the female category. https://www.hecheated.org/totals_results_2020s
This is unsafe, unfair, and wrong. Accordingly, I implore you to vote yes on H.R. 28.
Sincerely yours,
There is now a companion bill live in the Senate. I suspect it will be voted on ASAP when the House passed the bill. The text for the Senate bill is here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s9pcs/pdf/BILLS-119s9pcs.pdf