Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Leigh Ann O’Neill.
As regional and state track and field meets unfold across the country this month, high school girls in several states are being forced to choose between two terrible options: Compete against biological males and risk losing spots on the podium, college scholarships and state titles, or boycott their events entirely and forfeit dreams they’ve spent years training to achieve.
No student should be put in this position.
Yet this is what female athletes face under policies that permit male athletes who identify as female to compete in girls’ events. In doing so, schools and state athletic associations have hardwired unfairness into the system. The result is a loss of competitive opportunity for girls and creation of sex-based hostile environments that violate Title IX.
As the Supreme Court made clear in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, Title IX prohibits schools from remaining “deliberately indifferent” to harassment that denies the victim equal access to educational opportunities. The presence of males in girls’ events is not a neutral fact — it is a policy-backed intrusion that alters the entire dynamic of competition, displaces female athletes, and imposes a psychological burden that no teenager should have to shoulder.
And unlike the school in Davis, which was faulted for failing to act, state athletic associations and school officials are far worse. They don’t just ignore complaints — they authored the policies that caused the harm. In every state where this is happening, formal complaints have been filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The notice of harm is on record. The science is not in dispute. And the injuries to female athletes — both physical and psychological — are mounting. It’s willful harassment, backed by institutional force, inflicted on young girls under the false banner of “inclusion.”
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But true inclusion doesn’t require erasing one group to accommodate another. The entire premise of women’s sports — recognized in law, custom, and biology — is that sex matters. Title IX was enacted because women and girls had been denied access to equitable athletic opportunities. Today, the very law meant to protect them is being weaponized against them by institutions that refuse to acknowledge reality.
And it comes at great cost.
Girls are losing access to the podium, to medals, to championship titles. But more than that, they are losing the full benefit of their educational experiences, not to mention the economic opportunities those victories unlock: scholarship offers, college admissions boosts, and the recognition that comes with athletic excellence. This is not just about fairness on the field — it’s about equal access to futures that athletics are meant to help secure.
The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires courage and clarity, not cruelty and cowardice.
We must be willing to say what is legally and biologically true: Discrimination based on sex is not only permitted under the Constitution — it is necessary to preserve the integrity of women’s sports. Title IX demands sex-based separation in athletics to ensure females are not subjected to second-class status in their own divisions.
As long as schools and athletic associations permit participation in girls’ sports based on gender identity rather than biological sex, sex-based discrimination will persist — and the burden will fall, unfairly and unlawfully, on our daughters.
Stopping that discrimination isn’t bigotry — it’s biology, fairness, and federal law.
Jessica Hart-Steinmann serves as executive general counsel at the America First Policy Institute.
Leigh Ann O’Neill serves as chief of staff and senior legal strategy attorney at the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Litigation.
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