The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association is refusing to change its policy in support of forcing female athletes to compete against gender-confused males, possibly setting up a showdown with the Trump administration.
(LifeSiteNews) -- The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) is so far refusing to change its policy in support of forcing female athletes to compete against males who claim to be “transgender women,” potentially setting up a showdown with the Trump administration over federal funding.
Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring school athletic programs to limit female-specific teams to actual females in order to continue receiving Title IX funds.
Scandal-plagued left-wing LGBT outfit PinkNews reported that the NJSIAA says it has no plans to revise its current policy that a so-called “transgender student, defined as a student whose gender identity differs from the student’s sex assigned at birth, shall be eligible to participate in accordance with either their birth sex or in accordance with their gender identity, but not both.”
NJSIAA legal counsel Steve Goodell maintains that the policy is “designed to be consistent with state law” and that his organization “would not get involved in” any dispute over differences between school policies, state law, and the Trump administration’s new requirements.
Trump recently signaled how such a dispute might be handled on his end, first by telling Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills at a White House event, “you better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” then by having the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opening an investigation into Maine’s compliance with the administration’s take on Title IX, including a state championship recently won by a “transgender” pole vaulter.
Gender-confused individuals competing in opposite-sex sports is promoted by leftists as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to (gender-confused men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, that found more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
