PRESS RELEASE – Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 26 of his counterparts are calling on the NCAA to restore the records, titles, and other honors earned in recent years by female athletes but denied because of policies allowing biological males to participate in female sports.
“Fairness demands that we recognize the women who trained, competed and won under the rules as they were meant to be,” Yost said. “Title IX exists for a very important reason.”
In a letter sent to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the attorneys general note that Title IX protections afforded to female athletes since 1972 leveled the playing field and offered a fair chance for women to excel.
But these protections were upended, it says, by policies created during the Biden administration that enabled transgender women – men who identify as women – to compete against biological females in NCAA sporting events throughout the country.
“There is no doubt that the women forced to compete against biological males in female events were impacted negatively and unfairly disadvantaged,” the attorneys general write.
The letter acknowledges the NCAA’s efforts in February to update its Participation Policy for Transgender Student Athletes, which limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes “assigned female at birth only.”
But it also says that this change isn’t enough – and it urges the NCAA “to show your support for the women harmed by years of bad policy” by restoring “all appropriate recognitions to the women athletes who were wrongfully denied all that they earned.”
In addition to AG Yost, the attorneys general of these states signed the letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming.