Tomorrow marks a pivotal moment as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in two cases that encapsulate a major cultural conflict gripping the nation. These cases could significantly influence various aspects of American life, particularly the future of women in our society. As early advocates for women’s sports, we understand the weight of the court’s forthcoming decisions.
The legal crux of these cases lies in whether states must compromise fair and safe competition for female athletes when male athletes, identifying as female, seek to participate in girls’ sports. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, alongside Alliance Defending Freedom counsel representing us in our own lawsuit, are defending state laws designed to protect women’s sports. These laws are being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that gender identity should take precedence over biological distinctions.
In recent years, the issue of athletics has gained widespread attention. Many Americans have become aware of the perceived threats and inequities posed by biological men competing against women—threats that include losing medals and championships, facing physical danger, and missing out on scholarships and record book entries.
Beyond these immediate concerns, the debate highlights the fundamental realities of biology. It underscores that femininity and masculinity are not merely mental states, but are deeply rooted in physical differences. Men generally possess greater size, speed, and strength, attributes that neither time, drugs, nor personal feelings can alter.
Disregarding these biological facts risks not only physical injury and injustice to women but also undermines 50 years of progress in athletics and beyond. Title IX, enacted in 1972, was specifically designed to ensure women and girls could compete on equal footing with their male counterparts, prohibiting schools from expanding male sports programs at the expense of female ones. However, this protection unravels when male athletes transfer their physical advantages into women’s sports.
The significance of Title IX is evident in its impact. In 1972, fewer than 300,000 girls participated in high school sports; today, that number has surged to nearly 3.5 million. Between 1972 and 2024, the number of female collegiate athletes expanded from fewer than 32,000 to over 235,000, illustrating the profound advances women have made in sports over the decades.
In 1972, only 2% of colleges’ athletic budgets funded women’s sports; today, about 40% do. And while, pre-Title IX, collegiate athletic scholarships for female athletes were nearly non-existent, today 41% of those scholarships go to women.
All that progress rolls backward if males can take spots on both men’s and women’s teams; this torpedoes Title IX and hijacks women’s sports. Fairness can’t be built on falsehoods.
And that, at root, is the problem. Both the legal conflict and the revised biology grow out of a lie. All the absurdities that have abounded in recent years — telling us, among other things, that men can become pregnant, that children should be taught sexual ideologies, and that youngsters should be allowed to get body-altering surgeries that make them lifelong patients to secure the change-of-gender they or their parents want for them — all of these are grounded in the conviction that reality can be ignored, denied, or changed.
That pathology eventually hurts everyone. It threatens the safety of girls and women in sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms, on athletic courts, and on playing fields. It endangers children who suffer permanent physical and psychological injury from increasingly discredited treatments and surgeries. And it erodes society’s abiding understanding of common sense, gender distinctions, and the nature of truth itself.
The high court, in considering these cases, has an opportunity to do enduring service to all Americans, but most of all to women, who in recent years have seen not only their opportunities erased, but their dignity undermined by the proposition that gender doesn’t matter.
It does matter. It should matter. And it’s our hope that those entrusted with the laws of our nation and “justice for all” will restore common sense, fairness, and safety to our society…simply by recognizing the reality so many are determined not to see.
Smith, Mitchell, Soule, and Nicoletti are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools for its policies allowing males to compete in women’s sports.
