Women spent decades fighting for opportunities in sports. It’s strange that keeping those opportunities now seems to depend on an election.
Girls aren’t asking for guaranteed wins or participation trophies. They want a fair chance to compete in a category set aside for females. And now, apparently, that question is being put to voters.
Girls shouldn’t have to win an election to keep girls’ sports. Still, that’s where things stand.
Tuesday’s results
On November 3, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington considered measures governing eligibility for school and college sports teams.
The proposals differed, but all raised a similar question: should female sports categories be reserved for females?
Voters in Nebraska, Arizona, and Washington approved measures barring males from competing in girls’ sports. Colorado’s Proposition 134, which would take a similar approach, was leading as ballots were still being counted.
My wife and I went to an election-night gathering with supporters of Protect Kids Colorado, the grassroots group behind Proposition 134 and two other ballot measures.
The effort was chaired by XX-XY Athletics founder Jennifer Sey and organized with Colorado parents Erin Lee, Lori Gimelshteyn, and others. The room was full of volunteers, watching the results come in with a mix of hope and nervous energy.
They had put in the work. More than 3,300 people circulated petitions to qualify the group’s three measures for the ballot, and 170,000 Coloradans signed them. Volunteers went door to door, visited churches, and spoke with neighbors.
There was also a considerable funding gap. October campaign reports showed opponents had raised about $4.4 million, compared with roughly $216,000 for supporters of the measures. Around twenty to one.
It seems the parents who backed the measures didn’t get the message that they were supposed to be outmatched.
By Wednesday morning, Proposition 134 had about 52% of the vote, though the race had not yet been called.
A fight decades in the making
This debate began long before anyone printed campaign signs. Women spent years pushing to get their daughters onto playing fields, into gyms, and onto college teams. They fought for equipment, practice time, coaches, and scholarships.
Representatives Patsy Mink and Edith Green, along with Senator Birch Bayh, helped bring that effort to Congress. President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law on June 23, 1972. The law barred sex discrimination in federally funded education, and athletics became one of its most significant applications.
Putting the law into practice took years of further advocacy and litigation. Before Title IX, girls accounted for about 294,000 high school sports participation entries. In the 2025–2026 school year, the number was more than 3.65 million.
That is a remarkable change. And yet we are now debating whether the female category that helped make much of that progress possible should remain female.
We opened the gym doors to girls. Somewhere along the way, some adults seem to have lost sight of why separate teams were created.
Why biology matters in sports
Biological sex affects athletic performance. A person’s identity may differ from their sex, but that does not change their biological sex. Hormones or surgery can alter some physical traits, but they do not turn a male into a biological female.
The American College of Sports Medicine describes biological sex as a major factor in athletic performance. Its consensus statement discusses how male puberty can lead to substantial differences in muscle mass, strength, power, oxygen-carrying capacity, and other traits relevant to competition.
Before puberty, performance differences are much smaller. This isn’t a claim that every boy will outperform every girl. It helps explain why girls’ teams exist.
We accept competitive categories in other sports. A lightweight boxer who objects to facing a heavyweight isn’t usually told that the objection shows a lack of inclusiveness. But girls are often expected to accept a similar dismissal of the physical differences their category is meant to account for.
Girls facing real consequences
These are not just abstract arguments. Real athletes have been affected.
Riley Gaines became a national advocate after tying Lia Thomas at the NCAA championships. At the Paris Olympics, Italian boxer Angela Carini withdrew from her bout after 46 seconds following powerful punches from Imane Khelif. The fight renewed debate about why the International Olympic Committee allowed Khelif to compete after a previous disqualification over sex eligibility.
Fencer Stephanie Turner was disqualified after taking a knee rather than compete against an opponent who identifies as female. In Connecticut, runners Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti challenged a policy that allowed male athletes identifying as female to compete in girls’ track. Their lawyers say two competitors won 15 girls’ state titles from 2017 through 2020.
The Connecticut lawsuit is about lost honors and opportunities, not simply a disagreement over words.
There is also Payton McNabb, a North Carolina volleyball player who was hit in the face by a ball spiked by a transgender opponent in 2022. McNabb has said she suffered a concussion and lasting effects, including vision problems and partial paralysis.
Injuries are part of sports. The question is why girls should be expected to accept additional concerns about physical mismatches, while their objections are treated as the problem. They shouldn’t have to suffer a serious injury before adults take those concerns seriously.
Turning the concern back on girls
The dispute reaches beyond competition and into locker-room privacy.
Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan testified that administrators told female swimmers that Lia Thomas’ participation and presence in their locker room were not open to discussion. When the women objected, they were offered psychological services to help them feel comfortable undressing in front of a male.
Scanlan described the university’s response this way: “We, the women, were the problem, not the victims.”
The women raised concerns about their privacy. The university’s response, as Scanlan described it, was that they needed to change their feelings about the situation. Their boundaries, in other words, were the ones expected to move.
In 2025, Penn reached a federal Title IX resolution agreement that included policy changes and individual apologies to affected female swimmers. An apology matters. So would having listened to them earlier.
Many other girls don’t have public profiles. There’s the girl who misses qualifying for state, the one who loses a scholarship, or the one who changes in a bathroom stall. Some may worry that speaking up will cost them friends, teammates, or a place on the roster. More are finding the courage to speak anyway.
A championship race happens once. For some athletes, it comes after years of training, and there’s no way to give a teenager that chance back when she’s 30.
Girls should not need a national following before adults in their own communities are willing to listen.
Putting kids first
In Colorado, the dispute is continuing. Parents at Dakota Ridge High School have objected after a male student who identifies as female made the girls’ junior varsity volleyball team while female students were cut. Their concern raises a basic question: whose opportunities is a girls’ roster meant to serve?
Jefferson County Public Schools says its gender-identity policies comply with Colorado law. The federal government says they violate Title IX. In March, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found violations involving female sports, bathrooms, locker rooms, and overnight accommodations. In June, the department issued another warning over the district’s refusal to change its policies.
President Trump’s February 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to use Title IX enforcement to protect female athletic opportunities and locker rooms. Jefferson County Public Schools continues to oppose that approach.
In June 2026, the Supreme Court upheld sex-based sports restrictions in Idaho and West Virginia. More precisely, the ruling said states may keep those restrictions; it did not require every state to adopt them.
That helps explain why Proposition 134 appeared on Colorado’s ballot. Jeffco Kids First has helped bring local parents’ concerns into public view, while the school board opposed the measure.
Parents shouldn’t need to understand federal litigation just to ask who can try out for their daughter’s volleyball team.
The Olympics change course
The International Olympic Committee has also changed its policy. Starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Games, its new female-category rules limit eligibility to biological females, using a one-time SRY gene screening.
Even so, speaking up for female sports can make someone a target at a women’s basketball game.
Jennifer Sey knows that firsthand. Her company, XX-XY Athletics, sells shirts bearing the words “Refuse to Pretend.” Sey has also supported the Camas cross-country girls who walked away from a race rather than accept their male teammate’s participation in the girls’ category.
That runner later qualified for the girls’ state championships, finishing seventh at a regional qualifier. A place in the girls’ state competition is now held by a male athlete.
When someone says only a small number of athletes are affected, ask which girls are expected to give up their opportunity. Would it be acceptable if it were your daughter? Or does it seem fine only when it’s someone else’s child?
Fouling out
Earlier this WNBA season, security staff told fans to cover their XX-XY shirts. At the Finals, Sey recorded people harassing her and her friends, including telling them to kill themselves. Security escorted the group away for a “conversation,” then let them return to their seats.
You might expect support for female sports to be an ordinary position at a women’s basketball game. Apparently, the shirts needed their own review.
The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement says that “only players who are women are eligible,” but it does not define “women” or explain how transgender eligibility is handled. The boundary of the league’s female category remains unclear.
The league can tell you when a player’s foot crosses the three-point line. You’d think it could also explain who qualifies to play in the women’s league.
Moms for Liberty has helped bring these concerns into public discussion. Alliance Defending Freedom has represented female athletes, including the Connecticut runners, in their efforts to secure fair competition.
Start close to home
Those efforts matter, but national organizations cannot be the only ones defending girls. Parents need to speak up in their own communities, too.
At school board meetings. In the athletic director’s office. When policies are being written, and when their daughters say something is wrong.
A dad can spot a missed holding penalty from the upper deck through a crowd of people and their snacks. Surely he can speak up when his daughter’s opportunity is at stake.
Show up. Ask direct questions, and expect answers. Support your daughter when she speaks, especially if doing so comes at a cost.
We tell children to stand up for what’s right. They should see us doing the same.
Scott Smith’s daughter was sexually assaulted by a male student in a Loudoun County school bathroom. The attacker later assaulted another girl after being transferred to a different school. Investigations did not establish that he claimed a female identity to gain access. They did, however, establish serious institutional failures.
Protecting private spaces also means recognizing that access rules can be exploited. Girls should not have to decide whether someone entering a private space is sincere. And a father asking for accountability should not have to fight an institution more focused on managing a controversy than answering for what happened.
Nebraska and Arizona have made their decisions. Votes were still being counted in Colorado and Washington. Whatever the final results, girls deserve a clear answer.
Their mothers and grandmothers fought to get them onto the field. Their daughters shouldn’t have to spend their athletic careers in court explaining why that field exists.
Refuse to pretend. Girls shouldn’t have to give up what women fought so hard to win.
