We were college athletes.Supreme Court must listen to our case and save women’s sports

Former Idaho State University women’s athletes Mary Kate Marshall and Madison Kenyon signed on as voluntary defendants to help protect women’s sports in an Idaho lawsuit that will be heard by the Supreme Court.(Courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom)

Each of us spent a lot of our growing-up years training our minds, straining our bodies and gaining the skills to compete against other girls and women on the athletic field.We worked hard — forfeited a lot of fun and family time — and steadily disciplined ourselves to become better, faster and stronger to win those trophies, stand on winners’ platforms and earn scholarships that could pay for our higher education. 

Then something happened that we had no way to predict or prepare for.American sports culture went off the deep end. 

Seemingly overnight, our country’s athletic leaders decided that men could be women, that men had every right to compete in women’s sports, and that physical differences were irrelevant, DNA was unimportant and anyone could be anything they wanted to be.Throw natural law to the wind.

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Here’s a little glimpse of what that’s looked like: 

• InWest Virginia, a single male athlete competing on a state girls’ track team beat out over 400 girls in high school and middle school athletic competitions.While doing that, he was given free access to women’s locker rooms, where he made vulgar sexual comments to his female teammates to the point that one opted to wear her uniform all day rather than change clothes in front of him.When the school was told, nothing changed.
• During his first three years at the University of Pennsylvania, Lia Thomas competed on the men’s swim team, where he ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle, and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle.During his final year, competing as a woman, he suddenly ranked fifth, first and eighth in those respective events, broke six records at the Ivy League Women’s Championships, took home four women’s Ivy League championships and won a women’s NCAA championship in the 500-yard freestyle, beating two former Olympic champions.
• A recent United Nations study found that “over 600 female athletes in more than 400 women’s division events across 29 different sports were defeated by transgender-identifying men.Male athletes have taken over 890 medals from female athletes.”

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As two former track-and-field athletes at Idaho State University, we’ve seen the injustices faced by women forced to compete against physically stronger men.That’s why, with the help of our attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, we joined the lawsuit Little v.Hecox, led by Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, which is being argued at the U.S.Supreme Court today alongside another case, State of West Virginia v.B.P.J., led by West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey.The Supreme Court will hear both cases on Jan.13. 

Seemingly overnight, our country’s athletic leaders decided that men could be women, that men had every right to compete in women’s sports, and that physical differences were irrelevant, DNA was unimportant and anyone could be anything they wanted to be.Throw natural law to the wind.

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More than 50 friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in these combined cases — by women’s rights groups, female athletes, scientists, dozens of other advocacy groups, 27 states and the U.S.government — all asking the justices to allow enforcement of state laws that protect women’s sports. 

That support comes out of recognition that the damage this insanity has done to the spirit of women athletes, to the bodies of women competing against men and even to the landmark legal protections of Title IX is multiplied many times over by the brutal domino effect this denial of reality is having on families coast to coast. 

Parents intimidated into pushing their children into dangerous drugs and life-altering surgeries.Women trapped in prisons with violent male criminals.Women-only shelters forced to admit men, who sleep next to women still suffering the effects of abuse and human trafficking.    

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Mary Kate Marshall is a former track athlete at Idaho State University and a party to the women’s sports cases that the U.S.Supreme Court will hear on Jan.13.