The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced Monday that only biological females would be allowed to play in women’s sports.
The organization’s Council of Presidents voted to approve a policy allowing “only students whose biological sex is female” in its women’s sports competitions, according to The Washington Post. The policy will go into effect on Aug. 1 in time for the 2024-2025 season.
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Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones on Friday issued a statement celebrating the “courage” of Riley Gaines and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and a number of Georgia universities.
Jones commended the athletes “for their courage” and demanded the NCAA apologize and reverse course in a statement.
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Former college swimmer Riley Gaines and 15 other college athletes on Thursday announced a lawsuit against the NCAA over its transgender policies.
“I’m suing the NCAA along with 15 other collegiate athletes who have lost out on titles, records, & roster spots to men posing as women,” Gaines wrote on the social media platform, X. “The NCAA continues to explicitly violate the federal civil rights law of Title IX. About time someone did something about it.”
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Sporting associations have tightened rules regarding transgender athletes competing in women’s sports in 2023, drawing complaints from LGBT activists.
The issue of men competing in women’s sports has received considerable scrutiny amid instances such as Laurel Hubbard, a biological male, competing against women in the weightlifting events during the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, as well as University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas’s participation in the 2022 NCAA championships, where the biological male won the 500-yard women’s final and placed highly in other events. The international governing bodies for cricket, fishing and track and field barred biological males from competing in women’s events in 2023, following a similar decision by the international governing body for competitive swimming in 2022.
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Nine governors are asking the National Collegiate Athletics Association to rewrite its policy on transgender participation in sports, saying it is unfair to female athletes.
The NCAA updated a 2010 policy last year that requires transgender females to show they have undergone a year of testosterone suppression treatment. Testosterone levels are also checked before competitions.
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An organization of female athletes sent a letter Thursday to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, demanding that the NCAA reverse its policy of allowing male athletes who identify as women to compete on women’s teams, or face legal action.
A group of current and former collegiate and professional female athletes also protested Thursday outside the NCAA convention in San Antonio, after the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, sent the letter.
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Female athletes, alumni and supporters delivered a petition to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Thursday demanding that the governing body take deliberate action to prohibit men from competing in women’s sports.
The petition was delivered after the “Our Body, Our Sports” rally Thursday morning in San Antonio, Texas, during the NCAA’s annual convention. The petition demanded that the NCAA commit to single-sex athletic teams and “keep women’s sports female.”
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Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has already found a landing spot for his post-political career.
The second-term Republican governor has been named as the next president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association, the organization said. Baker, who played basketball at Harvard University, will take the reins in March from Dr. Mark Emmert. Emmert will serve as a consultant to the organization through June.
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A contributing writer for ESPN recently argued in favor of diversity hiring for NCAA coaches but told Campus Reform that the standard should not apply for recruited athletes.
Richard Lapchick, who is a former professor of sports business management at the University of Central Florida, wrote on ESPN.com that the NCAA needs to increase gender and racial representation among coaches and other senior staff on athletics teams.
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Dorian Rhea Debussy, a member of the NCAA Division III LGBTQ OneTeam program, recently resigned over the organization’s updated policy on transgender athletes.
“I’m deeply troubled by what appears to be a devolving level of active, effective, committed, and equitable support for gender diverse student-athletes within the NCAA’s leadership,” Debussy said, according to Fox News, after the national organization adopted a “sport-by-sport” approach to determining transgender athlete’s eligibility to compete on opposite-gender teams.
According to Fox News, Debussy said, “As a non-binary, trans-feminine person, I can no longer, in good conscience, maintain my affiliation with the NCAA.”
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The NCAA changed its policy on transgender athlete participation Wednesday as concern mounted over swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, identifying as a woman and immediately dominating the sport.
Transgender athletes will need to show testosterone levels within their sport’s approved range four weeks before championship selections, according to the new rules. They will need to document their testosterone levels at the beginning of the season as well as four weeks before championship selections in the coming academic year.
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A biologically male runner has been banned from the women’s 400-meter Olympic hurdle event because the runner did not meet the World Athletics conditions on testosterone levels.
“CeCe [Telfer] has turned her focus towards the future and is continuing to train,” the transgender athlete’s manager said, the Associated Press reported, adding that Telfer will respect the decision. “She will compete on the national — and world — stage again soon.”
Transgender runner Telfer won the NCAA title competing for a women’s team in 2019, according to the AP.
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Paying college athletes has been a hotly debated topic for years, but now the U.S. Supreme Court has released a ruling on the issue.
A group of current and former student athletes brought the lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, arguing that the organization violated antitrust laws when it prevented student athletes from accepting certain education-related benefits.
The case, filed in 2018, challenged the NCAA and the biggest conferences including the Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, and ACC. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the students Monday, saying the NCAA could not deny those benefits, which could include things like “scholarships for graduate or vocational school, payments for academic tutoring, or paid posteligibility internships.”
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Florida Republicans are advancing bills banning transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports despite – perhaps, in spite of – potential corporate criticism and likely sanctions by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
“I certainly couldn’t care less,” House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, said Wednesday after the House approved the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in a 77-40 vote after a four-hour debate in which 18 amendments were rejected.
The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, House Bill 1475, filed by Rep. Kaylee Tuck, R-Lake Placid, would enact a blanket ban on transgender athletes competing as women in Florida. Transgender athletes could still compete in men’s sports.
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The NCAA signaled that it may pull championship games from places that stop biological males from competing in women’s sports.
The collegiate sports league released a statement on Monday reaffirming that it supports “the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports,” which is grounded in the value of “fair competition.”
“The NCAA has a long-standing policy that provides a more inclusive path for transgender participation in college sports,” continues the statement. “Our approach — which requires testosterone suppression treatment for transgender women to compete in women’s sports — embraces the evolving science on this issue and is anchored in participation policies of both the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.”
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“I’m just worried about our perception, said State Senator Reynold Nesiba, a Sioux Falls Democrat, “because I think, generally, South Dakotans are a welcoming people.”
Nesiba was speaking to reporters about South Dakota House Bill 1217, a measure intended to limit transgender participation in sports. The measure would be uncontroversial in saner times, or at least those during which most people were still aware of the basic physical differences between the sexes. But we no longer live in sane times.
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“Science, at its core, is a social phenomenon.” This observation, from Alondra Nelson, the newly appointed deputy director of President Biden’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), certainly qualifies for a prominent place in the Pantheon of Inane Statements. The core of science, in fact, is the scientific method—posing and testing hypotheses; carefully gathering, examining, and generating experimental evidence; and finally, synthesizing all the available information into logical conclusions.
Dr. Nelson’s assertion is inauspicious, but perhaps we should not be too surprised by a “squishy” statement from someone whose undergraduate degree was in sociology, while her doctorate is in “American Studies.” What, we wonder, qualifies her to be deputy director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy? And how does it comport with President Biden’s commitment to always rely on “science and truth.” We suspect it is an example of how lip service to science has invaded the domain of real science.
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