U.S. Senator Katie Britt Continues Fight to Protect Women and Girls in Sports

America is saying, ‘we want to protect women’s sports,’ despite the fact that my Democratic colleagues can’t bring themselves to do that WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) joined her Senate Judiciary Committee Republican colleagues in a hearing entitled: “Standing Up for Women in Sports: Ensuring Opportunity, Fairness and Safety for Female Athletes.” She questioned several witnesses, including Kim Jones, the Co-Founder of The Independent Council on Women’s Sport, Carly Smolak, former professional soccer player, and William Bock III, Partner at Kroger, Gardis, & Regas, LLP. Following the hearing, Senator Britt joined several of her colleagues, including Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Darline Graham (R-S.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), advocates, and athletes in a press conference. During the Senate Judiciary hearing, Senator Britt criticized the NCAA: “I think the NCAA is feckless. I think that it is alarming, disturbing, and it is beyond reproach that they will not stand up for women. Can you tell us the issues at hand with regards to how the rules are written with the NCAA, or what’s not written that needs to be written down?” Senator Britt continued, “…(your) [biological sex] is an immutable characteristic. This is not a state of mind, much like your age is not, as much as we would like for it to be some days. We don’t let 16 and 17-year-olds … decide that they’re 21. We don’t let them go vote … Why in the world are we allowing these untruths to occur? Mr. Bock responded to the Senator’s question, saying, “100%. And part of the reason, probably for why they’re unwilling to put that in the rules is from 2011 until 2025, after President Trump’s executive order, the NCAA was the leader in putting men in women’s locker rooms, the leader in putting men on the playing field against women and hiding it from the American public. But they had a policy where they allowed men to compete in women’s sports, and they didn’t follow on that issue, they led on that issue.” Senator Britt continued with her line of questioning: “This is an 80/20 issue. America is saying, ‘we want to protect women’s sports,’ despite the fact that my Democratic colleagues can’t bring themselves to do that. But what happens if somebody else is in the white House and we don’t have President Trump’s strong leadership? What happens then? And what do we need to be doing right this second to make sure that we protect women’s sports moving forward?” Mr. Bock answered, “Well, the NCAA needs to have a policy based on biology, number one. And number two, they need to institute sex-verification testing of women’s sports so that we know that women’s sports are for women. But secondly, I think Title IX is a good basis, but I think that this Congress needs to go further, and there needs to be Commerce Clause equal rights legislation that applies not just to those recipients that receive federal funding, but applies as we do with racial discrimination, as we do with age and disability discrimination, that applies and protects women under the Commerce Clause nationwide, at every level … to be covered by the requirement to protect equal opportunities for women. It is a civil rights issue.” Senator Britt continued, saying, “You talked about the silencing of women where women are not allowed to speak up. If you do not affirm what this man believes, then somehow you will be stripped of your opportunity to move forward, your opportunity to compete. Tell me a little bit more about that because I think it’s insulting, I think it’s degrading, I think it is gaslighting, honestly, in the extreme. So, Ms. Jones, can you talk a little bit about that and what we can do to prevent that in the future?” Ms. Jones responded, “We need to live in a society where we can speak truth and we can discuss facts, reason in our opinions without threat of, you know, social isolation, ostracization, punishment … The silencing of women on this, I think, is just an intense amount of intimidation. There’s also a lot of fear from leadership to say, go away and be quiet, we’ve settled this, it’s our decision …” In her final line of questioning, Senator Britt highlighted the innate physical advantage men have when competing against women: “ [W]e hear obviously a lot about safety and fairness, which is absolutely on the forefront. But people say, ‘well, okay, now this man is on testosterone suppressors. So, you know, they don’t enjoy as much of an advantage.’ I believe that to be completely false. Can you also talk about the dangers of competing against women under those circumstances as well?” Ms. Jones agreed with the Senator, noting, “Oh, it’s 100% false … You can look at the publications from many of the world’s leading endocrinologists and scientists … [A]ll of the data to date shows that it does not mitigate male advantage of male development. But again, I want to emphasize that the concept of saying that a mitigated or weakened male is a woman is unacceptable. The female category is a sex-based category. Women’s sports exist to give the female sex opportunities in sports. We do not put weakened men into other divisions. We do not take a short man and say he can play against the children.” You can watch the Senator’s full line of questioning here . During the press conference, Senator Britt remarked: “Today we went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and not one Democrat came to ask a question. Here we have an issue where we have biological men, biological boys competing in women’s sports, competing in youth sports, and [Democrats are] unwilling to say a thing. Look, what we know is, [your biological sex] is an immutable trait. This is truth. We have got to preserve this for young women for generations. “We had people who fought for opportunity for young women, who fought for that opportunity to grow, to learn, to lead, to try, to fail, to be a part of a team, to be able to be part of the discipline that comes along with that, the teamwork. All of those things are taken away by not just protecting female sports. You’ve heard it over and over again: yes, it is about fairness, it is about safety. But one thing we heard at this hearing today is that young women are being silenced from coast to coast. They are being bullied. They are being told they cannot use their voice. They are being told they cannot speak the truth. That must end. The NCAA has been feckless at every single turn. It is time for them to do more to protect young women, to protect the opportunity that comes with sports.” “…[T]here is no one who has done more on this than Senator Marsha Blackburn. When we are looking at Senator Blackburn’s record from the famous moment where she asked, what is a woman to her moving forward and trying to make sure that we have a women’s sports day where we protect women and we talk about young women and the opportunity that’s created in sports on [October 10] to her continually going down to the floor to try to get the Democrats to do the right thing. I am grateful for her leadership on this. “As a mom of a young woman who I think is an incredible athlete, I want to make sure that that opportunity, that experience is protected for her and is protected for the next young woman. So, I will continue to elevate my voice. I will continue to push back on the gaslighting of the Democratic Party, the fact that today they could not stand with young women who want that opportunity.” You can view Senator Britt’s full remarks here . ###