You have to give it to them. Progressives have quite a keen sense of irony. An organization called the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) is getting involved in a lawsuit filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for its policies aimed at forcing female athletes to compete against biological males.
The organization purports to fight for “gender justice” and “use the law in all its forms to change culture and drive solutions to the gender inequity that shapes our society,” according to its website.
In a post on its website, the NWLC announced that it filed a motion in federal court “seeking to intervene in a lawsuit demanding the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ban transgender women from participating in women’s college sports teams and using restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity.”
In Gaines v. NCAA, several athletes and former athletes allege the NCAA’s already strict policies governing sports eligibility for trans student-athletes discriminate against cisgender women. Under political pressure, a few years ago, the NCAA hastily scaled back its own long-term, previous policy that offered a clear path to inclusion for trans women in college who were receiving gender-affirming medical care. Yet, the plaintiffs–falsely purporting to speak on behalf of a national class of all past, present, and future NCAA women athletes–want to force the NCAA to categorically ban women and girls who are transgender from playing sports. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Georgia, and Cooley LLP, NWLC is asking to be officially joined as a party to the case and has filed a motion to dismiss, citing severe flaws in legal and factual statements presented in the complaint.
Women athletes from across the country have voiced support for the inclusion of trans college athletes, including the iconic Billie Jean King, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and the reigning champion NCAA Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley.
Shiwali Patel, Director of Justice for Student Survivors and Senior Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said the group feels “called upon to defend against extremist attacks on our trans sisters—attacks that weaponize and distort the language of women’s rights to justify discrimination and bigotry” and affirmed that they “firmly support the inclusion of women and girls who are transgender in all aspects of school—including sports, restrooms, and locker rooms—as a matter of both civil rights law and human rights.”
Jennesa Salvo-Friedman, Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights project” argued that “Policing who is, or isn’t, a woman subjects all women and girls to intrusive and humiliating scrutiny.”
In these moments, I always wish I could sit these people down and ask: “Okay, so how do you define ‘woman?’”
Of course, we all know the answer would consist of blubbering about how anyone can be a woman and then calling me a transphobe.
This move on the part of the NWLC is a response to a lawsuit filed by former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines and other athletes against the NCAA over its transgender policies.
On Thursday, a group of women athletes filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Georgia, claiming that the NCAA and Georgia Tech are violating Title IX by allowing men to compete on women's sports teams.
At the center of the class-action lawsuit is Lia Thomas, the trans athlete who dominated the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The suit states that both the NCAA and Georgia Tech, which hosted the event, knowingly violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and sports.
The lawsuit, the first federal action of its kind, seeks to change the rules, rendering any biological males ineligible to compete against female athletes. It demands the NCAA revoke all awards given to trans athletes in women’s competitions and “reassign” them to their female contenders. It also asks for “damages for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.”
Swimmer Riley Gaines is one of the key figures in the suit.
It is ironic that an organization claiming to fight on behalf of women is now pushing to help biological males intrude on women’s spaces. Moreover, the organization, like most on the hard left, doesn’t seem to care about the unfairness and danger to women that this trend represents.
There have been numerous reports of female athletes being injured by biological men playing in their sporting events. Moreover, the distinct physical advantage men have over women means that female athletes are being deprived of critical victories in their athletic careers. The NCAA’s policy is very much anti-woman, regardless of what those trying to gaslight us would have us believe. This shows that not all who claim to champion the cause of women’s rights are who they say they are.
