Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is challenging the National Collegiate Athletics Association over its policy of allowing men to compete against women in college sports.
Paxton sued the NCAA Sunday and accused it of misleading consumers by promoting women’s sports as single-sex events, despite the inclusion of biological males who identify as transgender. By doing so, the NCAA is engaging in false advertising, a violation of Texas law, the lawsuit alleges.
“The NCAA is intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women by deceptively changing women’s competitions into co-ed competitions,” said Paxton, a Republican. “When people watch a women’s volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women—not biological males pretending to be something they are not. Radical ‘gender theory’ has no place in college sports.”
Paxton is seeking a court order to prohibit the NCAA from allowing men to compete against women in Texas sports or to prevent the NCAA from marketing women’s sports as exclusively women’s events.
Texas filed the complaint against the NCAA in Lubbock County, the home of Texas Tech sports and other NCAA events. The state is home to several premier collegiate athletics programs including the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, Baylor University, Texas Christian University, the University of Houston, and Southern Methodist University.
The lawsuit says the NCAA adopted a testosterone standard for allowing biological males to compete against women, requiring that they test at the low end of the range commonly found in adult men, despite a lack of evidence that it evens the playing field.
There is no scientific evidence showing biological males can reduce their testosterone levels to the female range, even with hormone blockers, and there is no evidence that lowering testosterone levels removes the inherent physical and neurological advantages men possess in sports, according to the lawsuit.
Adult males typically have ten to 15 times the amount of testosterone found in females, resulting in significant physical advantages such as greater muscle mass, bone density, injury resistance, and cardiovascular systems. Those benefits correspond to neurological advantages including greater spatial awareness, competitive drive, and motor skills that improve coordination and athletic ability.
Texas’s lawsuit also cites recent testimony from NCAA president Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who admitted that men have an advantage competing in women’s sports. Baker made the concession upon scrutiny from Senator John Kennedy (R., La.) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Baker cited federal court rulings to justify the NCAA’s current position on male athletes competing against women, even though no federal judge has ruled directly on the NCAA’s policy.