At Santa Fe High School in New Mexico, two football players following an accusation that they held another teammate down and sexually assaulted him. In Orange County, California, reports surfaced of at least who were sexually assaulted by their teammates at Santa Margarita Catholic High School. Mead High School, in Spokane, Washington, fired their coach after filed a lawsuit alleging that white teammates assaulted them. 

Studies show that of all high school students experience hazing, with 25% of respondents saying that it took place in a sports setting. Dr. Elizabeth Allan, the founder of the research group StopHazing, as “any activity expected of someone joining or participating in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers them, regardless of a person’s willingness to participate.” 

Hazing is most common in large groups like sports teams, where individuals are attempting to establish their position within hierarchies shaped by norms of traditional masculinity. These rituals can range from an unspoken tradition of requiring freshman athletes to carry the water bottles of seniors to sexually abusive behavior. 

Researchers fear that in severity and frequency, with sexually degrading acts emerging more often as a shortcut to humiliate and disempower a student. Despite their prevalence in sports, it is vital to recognize that hazing and sexual violence are not inherent to sports; they take hold when a culture of abuse is allowed to thrive.

As a sexual violence prevention educator who has facilitated workshops on building healthy sport cultures, I know firsthand that sports don’t need to be this way, especially when school districts and coaches prioritize efforts to create healthy and inclusive cultures on their athletic teams.

My journey as an advocate  began when I was a captain of the Melrose High School track and field team in Massachusetts. , a local nonprofit with a mission of raising community awareness of domestic and teen dating violence, has worked closely with the Melrose Public Schools to implement prevention programs at the middle and high school levels since 1998.

In my senior year, I was selected along with other sport captains to participate in a gender violence, sexual harassment, and bullying prevention program called (MVP). The program follows a model in which the social capital and leadership skills common in high school athletes are leveraged to promote a culture of respect and inclusion.

Facilitators lead participants through discussions of realistic scenarios covering a variety of abusive behavior they might witness as bystanders and discuss how they can safely and realistically intervene. Participants also learn how gender stereotypes and dominant cultural expectations of masculinity – such as telling sexist jokes, catcalling, harassing girls and women, and making homophobic remarks – contribute to a culture where sexual violence and hazing are allowed to thrive.

Such partnerships with community-based nonprofits can help schools tackle these issues. But, buy-in from coaches is critical as well.   found that 86% of coaches agreed that hazing was an issue in their community, but only 40% had a clear set of standards around appropriate behavior or how and when to intervene when hazing occurs. The study also found that six in 10 of coaches personally experienced hazing when they played a sport, which may lead them to normalize these behaviors unless they are provided with proper education and resources on how to build healthy team cultures.

Given that many high school coaches are volunteers or receive minimal compensation, they cannot be expected to drive change without the support of school districts and policymakers. In 2024, the Virginia Senate took a significant step by requiring the development and implementation of a research-based anti-hazing education program in all high school health and physical education classes statewide. 

This builds on Virginia’s earlier efforts in the anti-hazing space, particularly Adam’s Law, passed in 2022 in honor of Virginia Commonwealth University student , who died in a fraternity hazing incident in 2021. Adam’s Law mandates hazing prevention education at all Virginia colleges, grants legal immunity to bystanders who intervene, and requires universities to publicly report hazing incidents online.

In his last weeks in office, then-President Joe Biden signed the , which requires universities to collect and publicly report data on hazing incidents. While this will improve transparency and awareness, the high number of violent hazing incidents in the past year’s high school football season shows the need for earlier intervention, as modeled in Massachusetts and Virginia.

School districts can reinforce their commitment to hazing prevention by implementing clear policies that include education for both coaches and athletes on what constitutes hazing, how to intervene safely, and how to foster team traditions and school spirit in ways that promote inclusion rather than harm. Additionally, athletic directors should establish anonymous reporting mechanisms that empower athletes to speak up safely and enforce zero-tolerance policies with well-defined consequences for hazing.

Sports have the potential to teach young people the value of teamwork, resilience in the face of challenges, and principles of lifelong physical fitness. But to truly fulfill this potential, all stakeholders in youth sports—policymakers, school administrators, athletic directors, coaches, and parents—must treat hazing, sexual violence, and abusive behaviors as the urgent, preventable issues that they are. 

If you have experienced sexual violence, hazing, or any form of abuse in a sports setting, you are not alone. is a no-cost call, text, and chat service for athletes, coaches, parents, and anyone in sports communities who has questions or concerns about abuse or mental well-being in athletics.

At this year’s summer Paralympics in Paris, earned a silver medal in the F64 shot put. She also competed in the F64 discus event and came in 10th place. F64 is a for Paralympians with limb deficiencies and leg length differences.

“With able-bodied kids, they can use their body differently,” Middleton, a sophomore at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, The Daily Bulletin in an interview last year. “They have both of their legs. They can do certain things a lot stronger. But it doesn’t matter because I can still compete with them.” 

Middleton is one of three inspiring high school Paralympians on Team USA who are competing in Paris this year. Here are their stories:

ARELLE MIDDLETON, 16

Middleton was with a congenital femoral deficiency, which means her left leg is shorter than her right leg and her left hip is underdeveloped. Despite physical challenges, she competes alongside athletes without disabilities in track and field high school meets.

In 2023, when Middleton was just 15 years old, she was named U.S. Paralympics Track & Field High School Female Field Athlete of the Year, and also a spot on the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field High School All-American list.

Her mother, former WNBA player Sandra Van Embricqs, encouraged Middleton to get involved in sports at an early age.

Middleton joined the Challenged Athletes Foundation, or CAF, at age 12 and frequently won competitions. But when she entered high school, her mother strongly encouraged her to join the Los Osos track and field team.

“I didn’t know how I would feel being with able-bodied kids,” Middleton told The Daily Bulletin. “They wouldn’t really understand as much as kids with a disability would understand, but I met some great people here. It’s good to be part of something with your school.”

The Paralympian plans to compete in both wheelchair basketball and track and field after she graduates in 2026. She believes cross-training will benefit her performance in each sport.

Several college basketball programs have already Middleton.

JORDAN WHITE, 15

At 15 years old, Jordan White is the youngest archer from the U.S. to for the Paralympics this summer. 

A sophomore at Hill Country Christian School of Austin, White’s math teacher Christopher Felleisen calls him a “phenomenal student.”

He’s also a quick learner. The Austin, Texas, native tried archery for the first time less than four years ago when he was looking for a new activity to keep him busy during COVID. He has since won six national records. And less than a year ago, he began working toward competing in Paris.

White was with a right leg that is shorter than the left, challenging his flexibility. He dedicates six to seven days a week to perfecting his form, strength, and mental agility and understands the role he plays in enhancing the representation of people with disabilities in archery. 

“I really hope that I can pave the way for other young disabled archers,” he Hill Country News in August.

“Jordan is a hard worker, asks great questions and is an extremely high achiever,” Felleisen told The 74. “What’s exciting about having Jordan in class is that he’s dedicated to doing well and it’s seen in his athletic performance, but his level of achievement is not very different in the classroom.”

White, who is part of a close-knit group of friends known as the ‘Lunch Bunch,’ takes part in his  high school’s engineering pathway program, which focuses on engineering and robotics classes. He’s also a member of the National Junior Honor Society and the yearbook staff. 

“He’s known for being incredibly intelligent and he’s at the top of all his classes, and everyone knows it,” added his academic and college advisor Jessica Pyo.

His teachers say they’re closely following his performance at the Paralympics.

“It looks like he’s having a lot of fun and this is a great story for him to tell, especially with college applications coming soon.” Pyo said.

MAYLEE PHELPS, 17

At just 17, Maylee Phelps has taken wheelchair tennis by storm and has secured a win in the first round of women’s singles in Paris. 

Phelps, a high school junior in Portland, Oregon, was with spina bifida, a condition where the spinal cord does not develop properly. This requires her to wear a leg brace and use a wheelchair.

The Paralympian began competing nationally at age 12, the International Tennis Federation’s Wheelchair Tennis Junior of the Year in 2023 and she scored the No. 1 position on the Cruyff Foundation Girls’ Junior Ranking. 

Phelps her homeschool schedule with at least five days a week of tennis practice and strength training. 

“She just absorbs,” U.S. national wheelchair tennis coach John Devorss the University of Oregon. “You tell her something and it just takes a few times and she’s correcting it herself, which is a great characteristic of any athlete is just be really coachable.”

Phelps and Devorss train in Salem, Oregon, which is more than an hour south of Phelps’ home in Portland. 

In her free time, the tennis player enjoys puzzles and playing with her dog Otis. She also volunteers at Shriners Hospital for Children, introducing children with disabilities to tennis.

A federal judge ordered Hanover County Public Schools late Friday to temporarily cease blocking a transgender middle school student from trying out for and, if selected, playing on a sports team this school year.

In February, the student, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, filed a lawsuit claiming the school division violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

ACLU stated that the ruling found that the school board “likely violated” both when it banned the Hanover student from the tennis team.

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“This order is a reminder to school boards that protecting transgender young people is part of protecting girls’ sports,” said legal director Eden Heilman, in a statement. “And it’s a flashing red light to any Virginia school board that might be tempted to think that VDOE’s anti-trans model policies give it license to abuse its power. As the court reminded Hanover County School Board in its ruling, no state policies can shield Virginia schools from accountability for violating federal law.”

Last year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration overhauled the model policies for transgender and nonbinary students designed under former Gov. Ralph Northam to protect the privacy and rights of such students.

In February, ACLU and Freshfields filed three lawsuits challenging the Virginia Department of Education on the policies that some schools have adopted.

In opposition to a student’s right to decide who finds out about their gender status out of fear of being bullied or harassed, the governor sided with parents’ rights, directing the administration to overhaul the policies.

The administration the policies to require parental approval for any changes to students’ “names, nicknames, and/or pronouns,” direct schools to keep parents “informed about their children’s well-being” and require that student participation in activities and athletics and use of bathrooms be based on sex, “except to the extent that federal law otherwise requires.”

Freshfields and ACLU filed the Hanover case in two courts, the Eastern District of Virginia and the Hanover County Circuit Court. The third lawsuit involving a York County student was in July. That suit claimed that at least one teacher had refused to address the student by her correct first name.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that the Hanover case is being heard separately in the federal and county courts. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on and .

In just a few weeks, these Olympians will be back to learning English and math with a proud story to tell.

Rivera, the youngest athlete on Team USA, a gold medal for the women’s gymnastics team finals, alongside decorated gymnasts Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Suni Lee.

“This was such an amazing experience and just being with the team to support them meant the world to me,” Rivera after receiving her gold medal in Paris. “It was so surreal.”

The 16-year-old New Jersey native did not compete as part of gymnastics team’s final competition, however. Rivera failed to qualify for the final based on her performance in two individual events — the bars and beam. Her overall score still helped the U.S. women’s gymnastics team advance and clinch the gold.

absolutely loving the commentators talking about how important hezly rivera is to this team and how just because she isn’t competing, doesn’t mean she contributed any less to wherever they stand at the end of the night

— aman (@royaltothebay)

Rivera attends Inspire Academy, an online school that allows her the flexibility to balance a rigorous training schedule.

Like Rivera, Wilson in the first leg of the U.S. men’s 4×400-meter relay, helping the team to qualify for the final and making him the youngest male track and field athlete from the United States to win a gold medal at the Olympics.

Although Wilson, who is a rising junior at Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, admitted he “didn’t run his best,” he praised his teammates including Rai Jefferson, Christopher Bailey and Vernon Norwood, who helped support him during the run for gold. And he returned the favor as he them on from the stands of the Stade de France as they secured an Olympic-record victory. 

“I did what people said was the impossible…” Wilson on Instagram. “I’m the youngest US male track athlete to receive a gold medal at the Olympics!” 

The track and field sensation attention on social media when he his thoughts about the upcoming school year following his performance in Paris. He took to X and said, “Dang, I really got school in 2 and a half weeks #Gold #OlympicGamesParis.”

Dang, I really got school in 2 and a half weeks

— Quincy “Q” Wilson (@QuincyWilson5)

Jokes in reply immediately came flying in from fans after Wilson made this post.

“When the teacher asks for answers, raise your medal instead of your hand,” one fan said.  

“Them ‘what did yall do over summer break’ conversations gonna hit different lmao,” another added.

Like her high school Team USA counterparts, Shackell’s preliminary round participation helped earn her and her teammates Olympic medals. She a silver medal in the 4×200 freestyle relay with teammates including Katie Ledecky, Paige Madden and fellow high schooler Claire Weinstein. She also secured gold in the 4×100 medley relay with Regan Smith, Lilly King and Gretchen Walsh.

The 17-year-old, who will begin her senior year at Carmel High School this week, has made history as Carmel’s first female student to win an Olympic medal in swimming.

Many know her as an Olympian. We know her as a student. Welcome back to our Senior Greyhound ! We are so proud of you. Go Hounds!

— Tim Phares (@Tim4Phares)

“I was just happy to be there and happy to go as fast as I can, and get the girls the next night a good spot,” Shackell . “I’ve been wanting a gold medal or like any medal since I was little, like 8 years old and dreaming of that moment. To be able to hold it is crazy, I’ve been looking at it everyday.”

Shackell is also the second female high school student from Indiana to win an Olympic medal in swimming.

For Rivera, Wilson and Shackell, many fans anticipate their return to the Olympics podium in 2028, when the U.S. will host the Summer Games in Los Angeles, California. They’ve just got to finish their homework first. 

Learn more about the other high school students we rooted for on Team USA this summer here. 

An Alabama state representative has filed a bill that would allow high school athletes to make money off of their image.

The legislation,sponsored by Rep. Jeremy Gray, D-Opelika, would be a name, image and likeness (NIL) bill for high school athletes. The bill is limited to the athlete and does not allow the use of “marks, including a school logo, school name, school mascot, or trademarked logo or acronym of an athletic association,” alongside some other restrictions.

“Because it’s already happening on a college level and what better way to get kids trained to the mindset of NIL by starting in high school,” Gray said in an interview on Monday.

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Alabama has had a state name, image and likeness law since 2021, The NCAA allows college athletes are allowed to profit from their image, name and likeness under NCAA NIL, ranging from the use of merchandise to autographs to running camps and clinics.

at least 30 states and Washington, D.C. have legislation that allows high school students to make money off of their image.

Gray’s bill says that no student athletes in the state “shall be prevented from receiving compensation for the use of his or her name, image, or likeness.”

Gray, who played football at North Carolina State, said he doesn’t think it’s fair that schools, but not the athletes, are allowed to make money off of athletes. One reason for the bill, he said, is the difficulty in predicting how long an athletic career might last.

“We may not make it to the NFL, NBA, WNBA, but a lot of athletes are training their entire lives for a moment where they can get actually compensated for their skills and talents,” he said.

Ron Ingram, a spokesman for the Alabama High School Athletic Association, said no one from AHSAA was available to comment this week.

Gray also said he wants to put Alabama on a level playing field with other state that have NIL laws for high school students.

“Monetization is important to me when it comes to student athletes, and especially on any level of high school, college or in the NFL because so many people are making money off the athletes and they’re not being able to capitalize on those opportunities, their sales, so this bill just really came from the premises of other states are doing it and we just need to move towards that,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

The first push came from the president, who on his first day in office calling for federal agencies to root out discrimination based on gender identity and expression, including in public schools. In February, the administration also for litigation filed in Connecticut by a group of high school runners who argue that their rights under Title IX were violated by the state’s policy of allowing trans girls to race against them.

Republicans picked up the gauntlet happily, with introducing bills to require K-12 athletes to compete in the gender category that they were assigned to at birth. Governors in , , and have all signed such laws, which have also passed in at least one chamber of state legislatures in , , , and . After a split between Republicans in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem along the same lines.

Beneath the political stakes lie swiftly changing legal and cultural mores, which are themselves being reshaped by new discoveries on the biology of athletic performance. In all, the status of trans athletes — and particularly the question of whether trans females should be allowed to compete in the girls’ category in high school competitions — has been taken up by combatants on all sides of America’s ongoing debate over the politics of sex and gender. Meanwhile, as the fight moves from playing fields to legislative chambers and courtrooms, advocates are attempting to strike a compromise between the necessities of competitive fairness and inclusion.

That balance has begun to develop at the pinnacle of elite sport, with regulatory bodies like the and the reaching accommodations that allow trans women to participate under specific conditions — typically including measures to suppress their bodies’ production of testosterone, which is linked to performance attributes like speed, power, and endurance. But adolescence, when many trans children are still early in their social and physical transitions, is a far more ambiguous stage.

Joanna Harper, a sports researcher at England’s Loughborough University and herself a trans runner, observed that various proposals to address the issue for teenagers all come with downsides. In an interview, she set a goal of “being as inclusive as we can possibly be without destroying the competitive balance.”

“It’s so hard,” said Harper. “How do you tell a 15- or 16-year old that they have to go on hormone therapy to play sports? It’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to say, but for these very high-performing athletes, it does create a conundrum.”

To others, one consideration supersedes all others: the need to welcome trans children into all aspects of school life, including sports. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the advocacy group GLSEN (previously known as the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), said that no claims around competitive fairness could justify treating trans students any different from their cisgender peers (i.e., those whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth).

“To use words from another civil rights fight, we know that anything separate is not equal. We know that when we start differentiating across lines of identity, young people will not be served by that.”

A ‘patchwork’ system

But according to Doriane Lambelet Coleman, sex differentiation is vital to the survival of women’s athletics. A professor at Duke Law School, Coleman is the co-director of the institution’s Center for Sports Law and Policy. She is also a former collegiate track champion who has worked in both American and international settings to develop anti-doping policies and rules determining eligibility for women’s competition.

Coleman that Title IX, which forbids sex-based discrimination across all federally funded educational programs, clearly mandates the segregation of athletes into categories according to sex-linked traits. Since its very purpose is to provide women and girls with the same access to athletic opportunity that boys have always enjoyed, forcing cisgender females to contend with rivals whose bodies lend them a competitive advantage effectively “[defeats] the purposes of the institution that is girls’ sport.”

“We need legislation that affirms the commitment to girl’s and women’s sport, and specifically to this set-aside of separate-sex teams on the basis of biological sex,” Coleman said. “It was never in doubt before that that’s what separate-sex sport meant, but now that it is questioned, we need to re-affirm that commitment.”

But Coleman also rejects the legal barriers being proposed and passed by Republicans, calling them overbroad. Some exceptions need to be drawn for trans girls and women who have undergone hormone treatment, or who transitioned before the onset of male puberty, she added.

The legislative push at the state level began almost exactly a year ago in Idaho, which flatly banned trans females from playing on girls’ teams at K-12 and post-secondary schools. In instances where doubt existed about an athlete’s biological sex, it would be resolved by an examination of “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels,” the text read. (The law was by a federal judge last summer, and litigation is still pending.)

As the legislation moves through statehouses around the country, students are facing an increasingly divided picture of athletic eligibility. , 16 mostly socially progressive states currently allow trans girls to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. Among the rest, some require they take medically prescribed hormone therapy, some require them to adhere to their natal sex, and some offer no recommendation.

Willingham-Jaggers referred to the sharp differences between different jurisdictions as a “patchwork” system that cries out for national clarification. In her view, that should come through the passage of the Equality Act, a federal bill that would amend existing civil rights law to prohibit discrimination in housing, education, and employment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. The Act in February, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already announced that it will be brought to the upper chamber for a vote.

Federal action is warranted because of the anxiety that trans students often feel about athletic participation, Willingham-Jaggers said. According to , over 10 percent of LGBT students feel discouraged from participating in sports because of their gender or sexual orientation. Forty-four percent of respondents said they avoided locker rooms because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable, 40 percent avoided gym or physical education classes, and 25 percent avoided athletic facilities.

“What happens when we discourage or intentionally exclude young people who are non-binary or transgender from sports [is that we] lock them out of all the positive effects that sports have on all young people — cis, trans, or non-binary,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “What is right for all students is also right for trans students.”

‘It’s no longer about sex’

Given the tiny margins Democrats now hold in Congress, neither the Equality Act nor any other federal legislation centered on trans youth looks likely to pass this session. While the possibility of regulatory reform still exists — the Justice Department recently stating that LGBT students would be protected under existing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex, including Title IX — policymakers and educators still face the question of how the rights of trans and cisgender girls can be reconciled when they come into conflict.

For some experts, hormone therapy is a necessary part of any solution, at least at the most competitive levels of women’s sport. In recognition of changing norms, leading regulatory bodies like the NCAA and International Olympic Committee have created policies that require trans females to undergo estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy before they can become eligible for women’s events.

Though she condemns the outright bans now under consideration in U.S. legislatures, calling them politically motivated, Loughborough University’s Harper said it was “perfectly reasonable” to place some restrictions on the participation of trans women in competitions.

As evidence, she cited the example of June Eastwood, a University of Montana runner who the first openly trans female to compete in a Division I cross-country meet. Eastwood completed the prescribed course of testosterone suppression during her transition, and generally proved a high-level if unspectacular performer in the women’s division. Had she not undergone the treatment, however, she might have easily dominated her sport; while running in the men’s category, Eastwood’s personal best in the 1500 meters was just a fraction of a second behind the women’s world record.

“Successful trans girls who have gone through male puberty, who have experienced all the gains that gives them and are good at their sport, will simply be too good, too successful in girls’ sports, unless you require them go through hormone therapy,” Harper said.

A less hypothetical case came during the 2016 Olympics, when all three medalists in the women’s 800 meters event were either known or suspected to have that produces both X and Y chromosomes in women. With testosterone levels that far exceed that of typical female athletes, those runners to undergo treatment to reduce their testosterone in order to enter women’s events between the quarter-mile and the mile.

But what is possible at elite levels of competition might not be workable in high school. Not all trans children have access to hormone therapies, and requiring them as a prerequisite for athletic participation could inadvertently distort students’ decisions around gender transition. To make things even more complicated, Republican legislators in several states bans on minors receiving “gender-affirming health care,” a treatment method that can recommend the use of puberty blockers and hormone replacement. In Arkansas, the first state to such a ban, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a veto on Monday only to the next day. If other states take the same approach, many transgender youth could be faced with a Catch-22 scenario: needing hormone therapy to compete in sports according to their gender identity, but being prohibited from receiving them.

All of it combines to make high school sports a particularly challenging space to adjudicate.

The best-known conflict within the realm of K-12 sports is now playing out in Connecticut, where have sued the state in federal court for permitting trans athletes to run track against cisgender girls. Between 2017 and 2019, those trans girls, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, combined to claim 15 state championship races. While former Attorney General William Barr formally backed the lawsuit, calling Connecticut’s policies “fundamentally unfair to female athletes,” the Justice Department under President Biden .

In part, the debate hinges on interpretations of Title IX, which was enacted nearly a half-century ago with the express purpose of in educational settings like sports. At the time of its establishment, school districts and universities directed their athletic budgets overwhelmingly toward male sports, and the concept of transgender identity was mostly outside the mainstream. By some estimates, participation in girls’ sport has increased by over 1,000 percent in the decades since. At the same time, the law permits “separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill.”

Duke’s Coleman sees the increasing social acceptance of LGBT communities as a positive development, but warns that it likely will also generate more such cases if states like Connecticut don’t carefully insulate the category of cisgender girls. Otherwise, she argued, it could drift into something like an open division freely entered not only by trans girls, but also gender-fluid and nonbinary competitors, and even trans boys who are actively taking testosterone but still permitted to compete against females.

“It’s no longer about sex; it’s not about sex-linked hormones; and it’s not even about gender identity, since trans boys can stay in,” Coleman said. “So I can’t even describe that group anymore. And if you can’t describe that group, who’s going to fund it? And if people continue to fund it, how will it stand legally? It no longer has integrity or a purpose that we can identify because you’ve let everybody in, essentially.”

Culture war fodder

Only a handful of states have so far restricted access to girl’s and women’s sports exclusively to natal females, and all are among the most Republican-leaning in the country. At the national level, Republican Senators and have both called for similar measures.

David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College whose research focuses on U.S. political parties, said that the GOP seems to be coalescing around the proposal out of a recognition that LGBT acceptance remains “a controversial, uncomfortable issue for a lot of voters.”

“Republican politicians, who are increasingly oriented toward cultural as opposed to economic causes, have been looking for ways to translate the culture war into policy and legislation,” he continued. “So much of the culture war is actually not about what the government does, but here’s a case where it can be.”

While that much of President Biden’s agenda is reasonably popular, the polling also suggests an area of softness around the issue of trans athletes. According to a 2019 poll from Morning Consult, agreed that transgender women possessed an athletic edge over other women. , administered last month, found that 53 percent of registered voters supported a ban on trans athletes in women’s sports. Even among Democrats, just 42 percent of respondents said they would oppose such a ban, compared with 40 percent who would support it.

Aside from those figures, state-level Republicans are likely reading signs from former President Donald Trump, during his speech at February’s CPAC convention that “women’s sports as we know it [sic] will die” if restrictions aren’t adopted. In the same way that some lawmakers adopted Trump’s hatred of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, and are now its associated curriculum from use in public schools, they are now attaching themselves to another highly charged topic whose salience he has recently elevated.

But few if any elected Democrats have vocally opposed allowing trans women and girls to compete in sports according to their gender identity rather than their biological sex. Of the 16 states where official guidance recommends that course, all but one — Florida — has voted for the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections. This too reflects the partisan and geographic polarization at work, Hopkins argued.

“You don’t have a faction in the Democratic Party that’s pushing back against that,” he said. “They’re not worrying about carrying Senate races in South Dakota or Arkansas anymore because they’re out of the game in those states. That has really contributed to the culture war polarization between the two parties: Neither party is really trying to compete in the parts of the country that, culturally, are on the other side.”