We are female athletes. All we want to do is compete on a level playing field. Why is the Biden administration so determined to stop us from doing that? Why do so many in our federal government want to stick their legs out and trip us, just as we’re leaning at the tape?
That, essentially, is what President Joe Biden’s Title IX rewrite is designed to do, and it’s going to leave a lot of women out of the running in the race to accomplish their dreams.
Indeed, this administration seems determined to take laws intended to accomplish a good thing and manipulate them to accomplish a very different, very bad thing that inevitably brings great harm to a lot of people.
The revised Title IX statute is a perfect example. Title IX is a historic law created to ensure that women have equal opportunities to succeed in academics and athletics. For 50 years, it was enormously successful in accomplishing that worthy goal. But now, this administration is trying to twist that law into something that will, in fact, take away those same opportunities from women to accommodate biological males who choose to identify as women.
To justify this, the administration has decided to ignore biological reality, dismiss basic science, and throw out common sense. And the price of doing all that is injured and intimidated women who will have been robbed of every chance to succeed and reduced to second-class citizens on every athletic playing field in the country.
But who cares if we set women’s rights back half a century? Surely, the wants of those who identify as the opposite sex outweigh the fairness and safety of our daughters.
If it sounds like this is personal for us, it is.
Four years ago, we filed a lawsuit challenging a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy that allows males who identify as female to compete in girls’ sports. Each of us had lost races in competition with two males who, between them, broke 17 girls’ track meet records. Their wins denied girls in our state more than 85 opportunities to advance to the next level of competition — and took 15 women’s state track championship titles.
Four of those state titles should have gone to Chelsea Mitchell. In each case, she logged the fastest time of any woman in competition, only to lose to the male athlete in the race.
Selina Soule missed qualifying for the State Open Championship 55-meter final, and her chance to run in the New England Regional Championships, by one spot in the 2018-2019 season. Two of those spots were taken by males. She qualified for the NERC meet in two other events, but was forced onto the sidelines during the 55-meter final.
Alanna Smith qualified for the NERC in her 200-meter event, only to see her second-place finish dropped to third behind the male in her race.
Two other males took Ashley Nicoletti’s opportunity to compete at the outdoor State Open Championship as a freshman.
Each of us has lost medals, a place on the podium, scholarships, and dreams we worked hard for throughout our teenage years. It’s taken nearly five years of legal wrangling just to earn our right to a fair hearing before a Connecticut district court. Four-plus years of our lives have been spent asking for justice and trying to save the opportunities that were taken from us for other girls.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is working to extend that disappointment and legitimize that injustice for every woman in America.
Our lawyers assure us that what the federal government is doing is unlawful. What we know — what we believe every man and woman knows, in their heart of hearts — is that it’s wrong.
All we want to do is run and compete against one another. Why is the Biden administration bending the rules to keep us from doing that?
Written by Chelsea Mitchell, Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti who are athletes from Connecticut and are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom.
