National Women’s Law Center Opposes Female Athletes Suing NCAA Over Transgender Issues

The National “Women’s” Law Center (NWLC) has petitioned a federal court in Georgia to intervene as a defendant in the blockbuster case of 16 college female athletes against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Gaines, et al. v. NCAA, et al.

In a direct slam to NCAA President Charlie Baker’s crackpot legal team, the NWLC boasts in a May 6 filing that it alone can save the day for trans-identifying males like Lia Thomas and allow them to continue competing in women’s college sports:

Whereas none of the existing parties to this case can adequately defend the claims at issue in this suit, NWLC can.

By petitioning the court to take the side against female athletes, the NWLC commits the ultimate hypocrisy. “Transwomen are Women” is the self-righteous trope it proclaims as it crusades to elevate males who desire to be females as the new “women.”

Established in the heyday of the 1970s women’s rights movement, this activist institution has for decades operated as if it owns the turf of women’s rights. But the 21st-century version of the NWLC has sold out women to the radical left’s gender ideology agenda, elevating protections based on “identity” and erasing women’s rights based on sex.

Today, the NWLC aggressively promotes legal rights for males who feel like women to claim female status. In this new “sisterhood,” the rights of women to the safety and privacy of sex-separated spaces, including women’s locker rooms, domestic violence shelters, and prisons, are eradicated. And women’s sports? They become dominated by mediocre male athletes who “feminize” their appearance with hopes of acceptance in the girl’s club, while they crush their female competition to claim championships.

Responding to the nonsense that a man who wants to be a woman can actually become one, Riley Gaines, the University of Kentucky All-American swimmer and lead plaintiff in the case against the NCAA, aptly replies, “Hot Dogs are Dogs.”

It’s not the first time this lawfare organization has thrown its hips into the female sports debate or stood in opposition to female athletes. At a congressional hearing on protecting female athletics and Title IX, NWLC President Fatima Goss Graves lectured that female athletes should learn to “lose gracefully” to make room for males like Lia Thomas in their sports. In the view of this “women’s” law center, it’s perfectly legitimate for a male to waltz into women’s sports as a transgender athlete and take home trophies.

NWLC’s position is the ultimate insult to every young female athlete who is getting up early, training hard, and missing other events in life to excel in her sport. These girls have no problem losing gracefully to other girls in their sports.

Title IX was passed to ensure female student-athletes had equal opportunity in sports reflecting the enduring differences between the sexes. Physiological distinctions between male and female bodies emerge from the earliest phases of fetal development. These differences cannot be erased by feminizing appearances, pumping puberty blockers, or taking cross-sex hormones to deplete testosterone.

But the NWLC has sold out to an ideology that denies these truths. It wants to become front and center in this landmark female athlete lawsuit — on the wrong side of women. It claims it can better argue the case for why Lia Thomas’ penis should be welcome in the female locker room —and why the same Thomas who competed for three years on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team as Will has every right to change his identity and win an NCAA national championship in women’s swimming.

The NCAA needs the cover of a “women’s” trans-activist group to give it any hope of avoiding a fatal defeat in this case. The NWLC makes the perfect foil to deny real women their rights. How could a judge rule against the NCAA for sex discrimination when a “women’s” group is the one peddling the delusion that “transwomen are women” with a straight face?

The vast majority of American voters see this push for trans-identifying men in women’s sports as a disgrace. “Girl dads” know their daughters can’t fairly (or safely) compete against the natural strength of a male athlete, even if he’s doping on estrogen and not working out so he doesn’t appear too strong. Nor should they be confronted by his nudity in the locker room.

But other high-profile foils are on hand to boost the NCAA’s tenuous position, including former athlete Megan Rapinoe, new Seattle Storm owner Sue Bird, and University of South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley. They’ve become pin-up girls defending sex discrimination against female athletes. I dare each to roster a trans-identifying male on a women’s elite team. What kind of storm would Sue Bird ignite by hiring a trans-identifying male in Seattle?

The future of NCAA women’s sports is on the line in this important lawsuit brought by champion female athletes taking the arrows for all those they represent. With the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) revising its policy to protect women’s sports, the NCAA has its back against the wall. It will take a lot more than a foundering legal organization selling out women, or poster girls like Rapinoe and Bird, to rescue it from the harm of its unjust policy of sex discrimination and harassment facing college female athletes in their own sports.