Appeals Court Strikes Down West Virginia ‘Save Women’s Sports Act’
The male’s feelings and wants are more important than the females.
I’m back and more than ready to tackle the issue of males taking over female sports and spaces.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit struck down West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which bans males from female sports.
H.B. 2917 required “for an official or unofficial school-sanctioned athletic or sporting event, that each athlete’s participation in the athletic or sporting event be based on the athlete’s biological sex as indicated on the athlete’s original birth certificate issued at the time of birth; providing a revised designation for sporting events; and providing a means by which civil actions can be commenced.”
By the way, two days after this ruling, five West Virginia female athletes refused to compete in the shot put against a male.
🚨🚨FIVE middle school female athletes in West Virginia refuse to throw shot put against male, Becky Pepper-Jackson.
This comes just 2 days after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the WV law that says you must compete in the category that matches your sex.
It's a… pic.twitter.com/RzMgh4jVRU
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 19, 2024
A “transgender female” identified as B.J.P., an 11-year-old, sued the state over the law. This male decided he was a female when he was three. Not kidding.
Background
In January 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia upheld the law.
The 4th Circuit issued an injunction against the law.
I forgot to emphasize a critical point that GWB brought up in a comment. West Virginia allowed this male to change his name and sex on his birth certificate! Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t allow that to happen! Sheesh.
West Virginia asked the Supreme Court to allow the law to go into effect pending litigation of the merits of the case.
SCOTUS declined the emergency request.
A female athlete asked the 4th Circuit to reinstate the law.
West Virginia defended the law before the 4th Circuit in October 2023.
Fourth Circuit Strikes It Down
This week, the 4th Circuit sided with the young boy over females.
Judge Toby Heytens claimed West Virginia did not make the case that allowing boys in girl sports jeopardized the girls’ safety:
For one thing, limiting the beneficiaries of the State’s largesse “begs the question” of whether the challenged classification is justified in the first place. Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 731 n.17 (1982). A State’s decision to create a classification that benefits only one class at the expense of others must itself be “substantially related to achieving a legitimate and substantial goal.” Id. Without more, the defendants may not simply posit that all cisgender girls are entitled to be protected from competition from all transgender girls, even when the result is harm to transgender girls.
Heytens also cared about the “stigma” B.J.P. could face if he could not participate on the girls’ team.
The poor male would face too much potential harm because he has been living as a girl for so long:
But the Act goes further by requiring B.P.J. to take on additional harms to avoid forfeiting the ability to play school sports altogether. B.P.J. has been publicly living as a girl for more than five years. During that time, her elementary and middle schools created gender support plans to affirm her gender identity and ensure she is recognized as a girl at school. To align with her gender identity, B.P.J. has changed her name, and the State of West Virgina (whose Act is challenged here) has issued a birth certificate that recognizes her changed name and lists her sex as female. B.P.J. also takes puberty blocking medication to prevent her body from experiencing male adolescent development and estrogen hormone therapy, which is leading her to develop the outward physical characteristics—including fat distribution, pelvic shape, and bone size—of an adolescent female. Her family, teachers, and classmates have all known B.P.J. as a girl for several years, and—beginning in elementary school—she has participated only on girls athletic teams.
Therefore, giving the male a choice to perform on the girl’s team or only the boy’s team is not a choice.
To make the male make that choice would undermine “her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy.”
WHAT!?
What about the 100 girls displaced in competitive rankings, this male in track and field?! A female athlete contended in her filing in July 2023:
Over the past spring track season, B.P.J. has pushed more and more biologically female athletes aside. B.P.J.’s athletic skills have markedly improved. By the State’s count, B.P.J. displaced over 100 different girls in competitive rankings this spring track-and-field season. Worse, B.P.J. denied two girls the chance to compete in conference championships. The displaced girls will never be able to recover those opportunities. This broad displacement contradicts what B.P.J. told the Court a few months ago—that not one “single person” would be harmed by enjoining this validly enacted State law, ECF 49, at 1. We now know that dozens of young student-athletes have already been harmed.
Why do we even have Title IX? Oh, that’s another piece I’m writing about today since Biden’s revamp of Title IX does nothing to protect females in sports and spaces.
Oh, NOW a court cares about hormonal differences when it concerns a male. You guys, the lack of self-awareness in this paragraph blows my mind:
It also would expose B.P.J. to the same risk of unfair competition—and, in some sports, physical danger—from which the defendants claim to be shielding cisgender girls. By participating on boys teams, B.P.J. would be sharing the field with boys who are larger, stronger, and faster than her because of the elevated levels of circulating testosterone she lacks. The Act thus exposes B.P.J. to the very harms Title IX is meant to prevent by effectively “exclud[ing]” her from “participation in” all non-coed sports entirely. 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a).
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Comments
The scorched earth solution to this is for 50 male soccer players to decide they are female and try out for the US Women’s soccer team, forcing all women off the roster. Play at least one real match, then all quit or heck, play for the season. Then quit after securing the World Cup. Make what’s happening obvious to everyone.
I would love that.
Just think of the women’s Final 4, if men had been in it
Catlin would have been a non issue
And that would have been a travesty
Sorry, fat finger error, I am in total agreement with you. With the shallow reasoning displayed by this judge and court there is only one solution, scorched earth.
Well that’s one option. Another is for women just to refuse to compete. I know some are in a precarious situation with scholarships and there’s money involved but here’s the thing. in the physical arena the women are not going to win anyway. Don’t give these trans pukes the satisfaction Let them compete alone.
Madness
What about women’s chess?
Chess isn’t a sport, its a game such as poker or billiards.
And yet there are still men’s a women’s divisions. Otherwise, women aren’t able to compete at the upper levels of the game.
They can’t compete at the top level for some reason much like pool. Nobody has a good explanation of this. Spatial awareness?
Different interests. Men abstract away from stuff and focus and obsess on a problem with enjoyment. Women complicate stuff with new and different aspects, are not upset if there’s something they don’t know. Men don’t know it either but they try very hard to find out.
Among young riders, it’s women that do well with horses owing to tact; such men as do well with horses use them to prove their courage. Says Vicki Hearne (Bandit, the chapter Beastly Behaviors)
FIDE has ruled that men who identify as women to play in women’s tournaments must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, a process which can take up to two years.
Anyone can play in open tournaments.
Men’s leagues have always been “open” leagues. Women were allowed to try to compete but they are never able (save drag racing, for whatever reason).
There was the comical set-up of the Bobby Riggs- Billie Jean King tennis match that motivated a lot of women to try to compete against men but they very quickly found out that that was a farce, at best, and it all quieted down for a few decades … until this new-found insanity that there’s no such objective thing as a “male” or a “female”.
In just about every physical endeavor, men enjoy at least a 10% advantage over women, often times much greater.
A 70 year-old man of average health still has similar aerobic capacity to a 20 year-old woman in prime health.
that is not quite true. I compete in competitive cyclying as such I am very familiar with aerobic capacity, anearobic capacity, etc.
First point is that aerobic capacity declines rapidly with age. A VO2 max of 60 for men at age 25 is excellent, A vo2 max of 37 at age 65 is excellent (mine is 54)
My vo2 max in my age group is in the top 1/2% age 68, Whereas, my vo2 max at age 25 would only be average.
The vo2 max difference for men vs women is about 10 years. which means that age 30 female is on par with age 40 male ( note this in only comparing aerobic capacity.)
That’s about like asking about something like Marksmanship. Women actually compete completely on par with men when it comes to Marksmanship. It’s not a competition of physical strength and dexterity.
No, they don’t, not at elite levels. Men have a lower heart rate and are better at identifying changing images, seeing detail from a distance, and tracking fast-moving objects.
I am not sure that the “risk of injury” with men in women’s sports is a winning argument for me.
All sports have an inherent risk factor. Over the years of officiating men’s and women’s sports at the college level on down, it really seems that women suffer more injuries than men. For example, watch a softball game versus a baseball game and you will see more women wearing hard knee braces than the men. The same is true for lacrosse, basketball, etc. I understand the idea that a male may generate more force when kicking, spiking, throwing, etc., but I am not sure that increases the number of injuries in the sport itself.
As someone who fought for equal opportunity for women in sports, I am frustrated and angry that men are taking women’s spots on rosters. It is wrong on many levels.
That being said, one has to wonder how the girls on the teams with men feel as they win a championship. One has to wonder the commitment to women from coaches and AD’s as they put men in the games over a female teammate.
Does hanging a banner really mean so much that we are going to deny women what so many fought for?
That’s my biggest fear – that men will take or dominate over women’s sports. I guarantee that there will be young girls who won’t try out for sports because of the physical prowess of men over them.
Equality in sports opportunity cannot exist when we are telling women that there is no such thing as “women’s sports.”
I disagree with you on the injury risk. We’ve seen cases of a male injuring females during sports. One incident is one too many. That’s also the main concern of a near and dear teenage athlete close to me. We also need to look at the word harm. We could apply it to displacement in finals, which could harm women emotionally and financially.
We have seen a few injuries caused by men in female sports. We have seen far more injuries caused by women in women sports. That’s why the “harm” argument, in my opinion, fails. Sports are inherently dangerous on some level.
I would agree that women are “harmed” on some level other than physical by the taking of roster spots by men and or unfair competition. Those are both valid arguments that I believe in and support.
An ancillary question then becomes “are we willing to have men dominate in women’s sports in order to hang a banner, and won’t that mean the end of women’s sports – and all it emotional and social benefits?”
I agree with you 1000%. Risk of injury cannot be the reason guys are not allowed to pretend they are girls and then compete against them. The reason is just because guys cannot become girls. Period. That’s all.
Gitarcarver – I am presuming that your first comment ” I am not sure that the “risk of injury” with men in women’s sports is a winning argument for me. ” was a typo since the rest of your comment supports the idea that injury rates are higher for women than men.
I have likewise been involved in sports for decades, (currently competitive cyclying). My observation in all sports I have been involved with is
A) the injury rates are higher for women than men and
B) the level of trauma / injury is much higher for the same level of impact. ACL tear rates in particular seem to be much higher for the same level of trauma
As a partial explanation, men as a rule do a better job of knowing how to take a hit and/or fall.
ie knowing how to roll, to lessen the impact.
Interestingly, the most dangerous high school “sport” with the worst injuries is … cheerleading, which is almost all girls.
Girls’ gymnastics is not far behind.
Prime – As a side note, mens cycling have much higher rates of crashes, most likely due to much higher speeds and aggression, attacks, more power and acceleration on the sprints,
Womens crashes happen at 3-8 mph slower (depending of course on the what level is in the field). Just noting that the extent of broken bones, etc is much higher than men for similar speeds during crashes.
Less bones mass? more body fat?, less muscle mass?
Mens watts per kg on average is 0.5w per kg to 0.75 w per kg higher than women
Interesting. I looked it up and see that top racers seem to run around 5.5 watt/kg, which makes .5 watt/kg your standard 9% male advantage, at the low end.
No typo. Women get injured in sports. Men get injured in sports. The idea that women are injured more with men playing in women’s sports is an unproven idea,
Can anyone honestly say that a woman would not be injured by another woman if the man were not playing?
That’s where the argument on “injuries” fails, in my opinion. If we are really, truly concerned about women being injured in sports, the answer is simple: eliminate women’s sports.
But as long a there are “women on women” injuries, it is difficult to say that more injuries occur because of a male in the game.
I am more supportive of the idea that men in women’s sports take away opportunities for women, which is why Title IX and other legislation were passed.
It would seem logical to assume that a stronger, bigger male playing a sport against women would incur more injuries much like a female trying to take on similar skilled male boxers but there has not been enough data yet to prove or disprove this. I suspect that if this continues there will be more than enough
This is a troubling sign that perhaps foreshadowed what Biden implements today with his Title IX changes. Those changes are absolutely HORRIFIC. I’m not sure what, if anything, should be read into the fact that SCOTUS refused to issue an emergency stay on the 4th Circuit decision. There will no doubt be numerous challenges to Biden’s rewriting of Title IX. Hopefully SCOTUS won’t be as reticent to hear those cases if the Circuit Courts aren’t favorable.
OMG right?!
I understand from people who have read the new Title IX language that Biden has inserted ‘preferred pronoun’ rules that require ‘discipline’ if a student uses the ‘wrong’ pronoun.
I can’t believe this will survive a 1A challenge. But, I guess we’re going to find out.
I think it’s more like SCOTUS wants this to follow the same course of appeals as all cases
While it’s probably not true for West Virginia, there are a lot of left-wing states where these female athletes believe themselves to be progressive and down with the LGBT agenda (and a disproportionate share of top female athletes are lesbian).
If they are supposedly in agreement with this agenda, they can’t complain simply because it rebounds to their detriment.
The Law of Intended Laws. And to think Thomas Eagleton was removed from the Dem ticket because of manic-depressive illness. How times have changed.
It sure sounds like the majority already sided with the plaintiff, calling him “her” and such.
WV screwed up by letting him change his birth certificate. It should record biological at birth and should never be changed, regardless of where you come down on the issue with later IDs and such.
RIGHT?! Don’t let them change the birth certificate!! I forgot to emphasize that detail. Thank you.
They started this sort of stuff, I think, with adoptions and making pretend birth certificates for that. Any attempts to rewrite history like this are crazy and really indefensible. No matter what the motivation might be, it’s wrong. And we all know that whatever the law or procedure is, it will eventually be perverted and distorted by the left, making it finally serve the exact opposite purpose of what it was intended for.
The black transvestite hits the white girl with a haymaker that breaks her skull and leaves her disfigured while clinging to life. The Romans roared in delight.
Now for my contrarian streak! For years feminists have been saying that women can do anything a man can and do it better, so now you girls have a chance to prove it
Sometimes, the best woman for the job is a man.
If there’s really no difference between boys and girls – as it would have to be if someone believed that a boy could “become ” a girl just by saying so – then there is really no difference in boys and girls leagues, at all, and everyone should just compete against everyone else. After all, who is to say that some “boy” doesn’t decide in the middle of a mile run that he is now a girl? Why not?
It’s also funny how all these lawsuits are only about boys pretending to be girls wanting to compete against real girls. There are no cases, at all, about girls wanting to compete against boys, whether they are pretending they are boys or not. There have almost never been. Because the boys’/men’s leagues have always been “open” leagues. If a girl could compete with a guy then she was welcome to try. Girls played in the PGA. Nancy Lieberman tried out for the New York Knicks (though it was such a farce that no one ever opened their mouth again about such an asinine idea). The only time that girls sued to compete against guys was when some weird girls started trying to be on wrestling teams and guys refused to wrestle them. The girls would get hurt and the guys didn’t feel comfortable in that situation, being a contact sport at all. But, other than that, girls have been allowed to compete against guys, though it has always run into the brick wall of girls being unable to compete against guys.
These courts are filled with idiots, deranged perverts, and flat-out lunatics. They are sub-par thinkers who make laughable arguments for the most insane ideas. This is a real sickness that will kill this society if it’s not taken care of, soon .. though it’s probably too late, at this point.
I was involved in one of those very few “I wanna compete with the guys” scenarios. In college, a woman who is now somewhat well-known insisted on being allowed to wrestle with the men in intramural sports. (There was no women’s wrestling intramurals.) I thank God that was then and not now – if current jurisprudence had prevailed it would have been ugly. But it was the beginning of the slide down the slope.
We had a girl in high school who was on the football team. Her choice. But, she didn’t join the team with a physical advantage. Wrestling is harder, since it’s so…intimate.
If a girl can compete with the guys on a level field then she is welcome to do it. Wrestling is different, as you acknowledge, because it’s a contact sport and it is also a real case where the guy could easily inflict serious injury on the girl in the normal course of legitimate competition. Boxing is the same and other contact sports are the same – which is why those sports all have weight classes for their regular male participation, to begin with. No one asks a 130 pound guy to wrestle a 180 pound guy, and they don’t even let guys wrestle a certain amount over their weight, even if they want to. (But women would be at serious risk at equal weights with the guys)
Judge Toby Heytens. Biden appointee. Spent time at Cornell Law as an assistant professor.
Any judge who uses the word, “cisgender” is a fool.
so again … a male who can not compete with males … calls himself a girl … and wins … I would pull my team
off the field … rather then compete against a male.
“This male decided he was a female when he was three.”
I didn’t even know girls sat down to pee when I was 3, so I call BS on that pervert.
As for Title IX, the appeals court simply erased it by erasing what mankind has known for 30,000 years: the correct answer to “What is a woman?”
The next answer is to ignore the opinion. Seriously. Ignore it. West Virginia is a sovereign state with an elected government obligated to protect its citizens, and maintain public safety. This court opinion is contrary to that obligation. Make JoeBama’s DOJ send their goons down there to force boys and girls into the same arena. Great photo op.
It’s long been understood that a tiny number of boys do seem to identify as girls from a very, very early age. That is what got the “Dutch Protocol” rolling. However, the Dutch Protocol screened candidates very carefully, omitting all with any other mental health comorbidities, and limiting patients to those who fit the mold of “consistent, persistent, insistent”. That is: they were consistently saying they were girls with no waffling. That that belief persisted over years. That they were insistent that they had to be girls.
Today’s wild west of trans isn’t even close to that. It’s mostly teenage girls uncomfortable with puberty, on the autism spectrum, or with other mental health conditions, including depression and eating disorders. Today’s doctors opt for immediate prescriptions for hard-core drugs with only 20-30 minute consultations. Today’s therapists believe the second a patient says “trans” that explains every other mental health condition they might have, and the way to cure everything–including autism–is to affirm, affirm, affirm.
The Cass report was just the latest sledgehammer to all of that. And a big, heavy sledgehammer it was.
No, this young man’s parents decided to get some social clout and virtue signal by destroying their son.
There’s no reason to doubt that he has identified as a girl since he was 3. There are many documented cases of this happening. It’s a thing. It may not be common, but it happens.
And the state can’t ignore the court. Any school official who flouts the court order will be immediately arrested. The DOJ doesn’t even have to get involved; the court will send a marshal to arrest the official. WV is a sovereign state, but it is subject to federal law. And the constitution gives the courts the judicial power, which is the authority to say what the law is. So the only recourse is to appeal this decision in the normal way, and in the meantime to obey it.
Of course the state can ignore the court. It will be playing chicken with the feds, of course. But it can do it. And it probably should. Let the feds then put WV’s state employees in jail. That action could likely trigger a massive reaction against the insanity. Maybe it will help bring this issue to a head. And maybe it would galvanize Republic voters.
The court itself will do it, and not involve the feds. It will send the US marshals, and throw whoever it is in a cell, and then order whoever is next in line to comply or be arrested too.
Contempt of court is not a joke.
Yesterday, Riley Gaines posted a video on X of middle school girls refusing to compete against a boy. The sport was shot put. Each girl entered the ring, then walked out again.
That’s what it’s going to take. As hard as it is, girls and women must boycott playing against or with boys and men. Maybe Gaines and Rowling can spearhead an alternate scholarship system, so young women who walk away can still get to college on a “sports” scholarship.
It is a lot to ask of the girls when all of the authorities from whom they could justly expect support will instead demonize them.
Biden just torched Title IX so now the feelings of men are officially elevated above the reality of women.
“By participating on boys teams, B.P.J. would be sharing the field with boys who are larger, stronger, and faster than her because of the elevated levels of circulating testosterone she lacks.”
Then maybe they shouldn’t have started screwing around with the kid’s testosterone (and brain) when he was 3 years old?
He is 11 now so that was 8 years ago and in the very early stages of social engineering radicals beginning to attempt to force female sports to accept biological male participants. What is plain here is that his parents decided to use him as a tool in their quest to force normalization of a perversion on society, no matter what the long-term damage to him was. (With emphasis on the word ‘use’). IMO their actions constitute child abuse and should be dealt with as such.
If he now lacks the testosterone levels to compete with males that is due to their choices and is not the problem of any school sport organization. Yes, it sucks to be him, but that’s what happens when parents put woke social engineering before the good of their child.
I took my pet poodle, stretched him on a rack, cut his legs in half, and painted him tan and black. He is now my dachshund.
The 4th Cir. has been trying to be the wokest federal appeals court for years now. It is making the 9th Cir. look over its shoulder pretty regularly.
Abortion.
That is why feminists won’t object.
Unfortunately the only answer left is for the women to withdraw from said competitions. I don’t like it, I’d love for my daughters to be able to enjoy organized Sports, but not at the expense of that potential for injury.
The ruling is absurd, but I have to ask why anyone thought the trans war would turn out differently? Spent a few decades telling boys and men that, basically, they’re shit, and eventually some boys and men will decide that if they’re going to be treated terribly as they are they’d rather be a woman, or at least be treated like one, instead. This absurd overcorrection may not be what you expected, but it was not entirely unforeseeable.
This case isn’t about sports.