The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can acknowledge that biological reality matters when it comes to women’s sports.
In a 9-0 ruling regarding Title IX and a 6-3 ruling on equal protection, the Supreme Court upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that protect safety and fairness for women and girls in athletics. Alliance Defending Freedom was proud to serve as co-counsel with Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey in defending both of their states’ laws protecting women’s sports. The ruling couldn’t have come at a more critical time. Ignoring reality comes at a cost, and when we ignore it in school sports, young girls are paying the price.
Let’s talk about who this ruling protects.
This ruling protects girls such as Adaleia Cross and her younger sister. Cross is a young girl in West Virginia who competed against a biologically male student who challenged the state law barring biological males who identify as female from competing against girls. While the lawsuit was making its way through the court system, the plaintiff was allowed to compete against girls and beat more than 470 girls in track and field as a result. In the locker room, the plaintiff used sexually aggressive language toward Cross, and school officials did nothing meaningful to address the matter. Cross ended up leaving the sport she loves.
Because West Virginia is now allowed to enforce its law, Cross again has the opportunity to compete safely and fairly. And her younger sister won’t have to go through what she experienced. The same goes for other girls in West Virginia, Idaho, and the 25 other states that have similar laws.
But there is more work to be done, and the court ruling paves the way to protect girls in states that don’t have laws protecting female athletes. The next step is to ensure protection for girls such as Kallie Keeler in Washington state, where state policies jeopardize girls’ fairness and safety.
The Washington high schooler, who has been wrestling since she was 4, felt her opponent’s fingers violating her during a match. She cried to her mother in shock, eventually giving up trying to win the match. She broke down in tears after. It was only after all this that another coach informed her and her mother that her wrestling opponent was biologically male.
Keeler’s mother, Stephanie Brown, reported what happened to school officials, who had 48 hours under state law to report the matter to authorities. It took them 53 days, and it only happened after the media contacted the district about the sexual assault.
And the harms of denying biological truth aren’t confined to sports.
As a teenager, Fox Varian felt that something wasn’t quite right. After suffering through a contentious custody battle when she was just 7, she experienced depression and anxiety and received an autism diagnosis. At age 15, she began to experiment with living life as a male. Just a year later, after a psychologist pressured her mother to consider invasive surgical procedures for Fox to appear more masculine, she was put under the knife and had her healthy breasts removed at age 16.
The relief she thought would accompany the transition never came, and all Fox could feel was shame, saying she felt “disfigured for life.” Now 22 and accepting her life as a woman, Fox is the recipient of a $2 million malpractice lawsuit against her psychologist and plastic surgeon for forcing a lifestyle on her that she ultimately knew was off.
These are just two examples that highlight the consequences of denying biological reality. The Supreme Court’s ruling, which recognizes that there are biological differences between men and women, is a critical step for women and girls everywhere.
But there’s more work to be done for girls such as these, including girls in California who had to share a podium spot with biologically male athlete AB Hernandez and girls in other states that openly allow biological males to compete against girls in scholastic sporting events. The girls in these states are being harmed and gaslit. Leaders and school officials in those states are telling girls that their natural femininity must bend to the self-proclaimed gender identity of biological males. This issue goes beyond winning and losing, although that’s also important. It violates the privacy and safety of girls and dismisses their perspective during their formative years.
THE CASE FOR LOCKING THE SUPREME COURT AT NINE
As Varian’s story shows, the harms of denying reality reach far beyond sports. Consequently, there are also children like her who are being told that rejecting the reality of their bodies is the only way to be happy, and their parents are being threatened with charges that they will drive their children to suicide if they don’t go through with these procedures. Keeping policies on the books that deny Title IX protections continues to feed this delusion that is harming almost everyone involved.
The win at the Supreme Court is a monumental victory for women and girls who now have a chance to compete fairly in more than half the states across the country. But beyond that, it’s a win for our children who deserve to know that it is truth, not ideology, that sets them free.
Suzanne Beecher is legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).