At least a dozen women’s and girls sports teams have forfeited games against teams with biological male players without consequences, but one team has been kicked out of its league for almost a year for refusing to play a team with a transgender-identifying player.
Mid Vermont Christian School in Burlington, Vermont, forfeited a girls’ high school basketball game in November 2023 against ateam that had a male athlete playing for it. The Vermont Principals’ Association resultantly kicked Mid Vermont Christian out of the association and denied it public funding through the state’s tuition program.
But other teams across the country have faced no penalties for declining to play teams with biological male players.
- The Collegiate Charter School of Lowell’s girls’ basketball team forfeited its Feb. 8 game against KIPP Massachusetts after a biological male injured three of the school’s players in less than 16 minutes of play.
- In 2022, the Cherokee County Board of Education in North Carolina voted 5-1 to forfeit all future games against Highlands High School because of a transgender player on the volleyball team.
- Several members of the Hillsboro-Deering High School girls soccer team in New Hampshire refused to play against the Kearsarge Regional High School team in October. The opposing team’s star athlete is a male named Maelle Jacques.
- In August, four Merrimack Valley High School soccer starters did not play a game in protest of a boy being allowed to compete in New Hampshire.
- Averroes High School, an Islamic school in the Bay Area of California, abruptly canceled a basketball game against San Francisco Waldorf, reportedly after being made aware of a transgender player.
- Several women’s volleyball teams in the Mountain West Athletic Conference have declined to play San Jose State University due to a biological male player who goes by the name of Blaire Fleming. The women of the University of Nevada at Reno volleyball team defied their school by refusing to compete against a team with a male player. They were the fifth team to do so, following Southern Utah University, Boise State University, the University of Wyoming, and Utah State University.
Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Mid Vermont Christian against the Vermont Principals’ Association for preventing the Christian school and its students from participating in the state’s tuition program and sports league because of its religious beliefs about biological reality.
Almost three-quarters of voters say they believe medals awarded to biological men who beat females in sports should be given instead to the women who lost. And 72% of registered voters think biological males should not be allowed to participate in women’s and girls sports, according to national polling from RMG Research.
Biological males competing in women’s sports is expected to be a “sleeper” issue in the 2024 elections. Female athletesworldwide have lost nearly 900 medals to so-called transgender rivals competing against them in women’s sporting categories, according to a new United Nations report.
Republicans have been slamming Democrats’ support for transgenderism, and several Democrats have flip-flopped or scaled back their position on the issue.
For instance, when a debate moderator asked Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Colin Allred about an ad from his opponent, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, accusing him of refusing “to protect the integrity of women’s and girls sports,” Allred denied his voting record on the issue in the House.
Former President Donald Trump, seeking to return to the White House, pledged to “ban” transgender-identifying biological males from competing in women’s sports in a Fox News town hall with only female voters on Oct. 16.
“I’ve never met a person that came up to me and they say, ‘We want men to play in women’s sports,’” Trump said. “Somehow, they’re pushing it. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve been talking about this for a while, because I’m ending it. On Day One, I’m ending it.”
Elizabeth Troutman – The Daily Signal
Elizabeth (Troutman) Mitchell is the reporting fellow for The Daily Signal and co-host of "The Daily Signal Podcast."
