Solutions to the challenges faced by college sports can’t come at the expense of competitive fairness for female athletes.
Solutions to the challenges faced by college sports can’t come at the expense of competitive fairness for female athletes.
T here are physical differences between men and women, and those differences matter, especially in competitive sports. Women deserve the chance to compete and win on a level playing field — and to dress and shower without a male in the room. Biology is not bigotry. It is basic fairness, and limiting women’s sports to biological females is the law in 27 states.
This is why the current language of the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate should be clarified to eliminate any ambiguity related to state laws that protect women’s sports. Last month, a firestorm erupted over this issue before the Senate adjourned for its usual August recess without acting on the bill. We can expect the body to resume discussions very quickly after it returns on September 14.
For evidence of the chaos created by vague or underdefined terms, just look at the WNBA. Ten years ago, if you had told me that a professional sports league for women would not be able to define the term “woman,” I probably would have looked at you like you were crazy. This explains the look on the faces of anyone paying attention to the WNBA. The Women’s National Basketball Association recently convened a committee, made up entirely of women, to provide a definition and clarify who is eligible to play in the league. The committee decided nothing and provided no guidance on the issue.
The committee meeting was triggered by the announcement of two former NBA players’ intent to enter the WNBA draft. The WNBA has since announced those two male players, who claim to identify as women, will not be allowed to play in the WNBA, but the league still has not explained why. Doing so would require a definition of terms. The league could take an obvious hint from the brand name of the shirts worn by some of its fans: XX/XY Athletics.
The biological truth that men and women are distinct sexes is settled law in 27 states, and nearly 8 in 10 Americans agree that men do not belong in women’s sports. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that states have a right to protect women’s sports. That consensus is not a talking point; it is the baseline any legislation on this issue must protect. Those 27 states took action to keep men out of women’s sports, and the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so. Washington D.C.’s job is to ensure that, at a minimum, federal legislation does not undermine those laws.
Gender ideology does not always announce itself. Most often, it advances quietly, through vague language buried in unrelated bills and programs — which is exactly why every piece of legislation touching sex or sports deserves a close, careful read.
The advent of the transfer portal and compensation for college athletes via Name, Image, and Likeness transformed college sports into minor league professional sports. Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s attempt to create uniform rules for this new era of confusion about male and female athletics is admirable. College sports will face complex challenges in the coming decades, and it will survive those just as it has survived past crises over its 100-plus years of history. Solutions to those challenges obviously cannot come at the expense of the hard-fought gains female athletes have made to secure competitive fairness.
No reasonable observer would conclude that Cruz, the author of the PCSA, intended to undermine state laws protecting women’s sports, despite the fact that some language in his bill has recently received scrutiny. The fact that there is disagreement between a legal scholar of Cruz’s stature and the legal minds who assisted state legislators in crafting protections and defending them at the U.S. Supreme Court proves there is opportunity for activists and judges to sow confusion and hold up these state laws while litigation proceeds.
This is the same gender-ideology playbook that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have battled in courtrooms and statehouses for a decade, and we cannot let ambiguous language take back gains female athletes have won. We have walked this terrain before, legislature by legislature, courtroom by courtroom. We know exactly how this story ends if we let our guard down.
Women and girls’ rights in sports should not hinge on ambiguity in the Protect College Sports Act. A simple four-character addition to the bill — “any provision described in section 113 (a)(1), (3) or (b)” — would eliminate any question of federal preemption of state laws on the eligibility of men to compete in women’s sports. Congress must fix the language now and protect state women’s sports laws.