For millennia, the Olympic Games have stood as the pinnacle of athletic achievement and excellence, underpinned by a commitment to fairness. No matter one’s race, ethnicity, or country of origin, athletes shared a singular goal: be the best, beat the best, and stand atop the podium.
In recent years, political fads in the United States have seen ideology override biology in sports, tilting the playing field toward males demanding inclusion in female leagues and contests. The advantages of these transgender athletes are abundant and apparent — greater strength, higher organ function, and more stamina.
For the girls and women they compete against, the consequences have been devastating. They’re not just losing trophies and medals in their once single-sex spaces to the men and boys who overpower them. They’re also facing significant increases in risk for severe injury.
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While allies of transgender competitors insist they are so infinitesimal in number that policy should not bother to distinguish them from biological females, the damages of delusion are especially pervasive at recreational or youth levels, where a wider population participates in sports. In 2023, a biological male in Massachusetts knocked out the teeth of a female opponent in a field hockey match after hurling a ball at her face. The year prior, a North Carolina high school volleyball player suffered a concussion when a ball was spiked in her face by a transgender athlete, causing physical and mental injuries so severe that she faced prolonged vision problems and was not medically cleared to return to play for an extended period.
After years of this nonsense, political dynamics are now thankfully reorienting toward reality, even on the global stage. This week, media reports indicated that the International Olympic Committee may soon implement measures to ban transgender athletes from women’s competitions. A prospective new policy, which would take effect in 2026 prior to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, is the result of a science-based review of male physical advantages, spurred by the election of a new commissioner who ran on a platform of preserving women’s sports.
As a nation that once served as the worldwide model for the preservation of civil liberties, it’s embarrassing that a foreign NGO with a history of corruption is on track to better protect America’s female athletes than we are.
That must change. For years, Republican state attorneys general have led the charge to save girls sports. As the attorney general of Alabama, I have personally filed two 28-state amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to ensure states are allowed to implement laws that save women’s access to sports. And in January 2026, the offices of Raúl Labrador, attorney general of Idaho, and J.B. McCuskey, attorney general of West Virginia, are scheduled to argue two cases on behalf of 21 GOP attorneys general in front of the Supreme Court, asking the justices to affirm our states’ rights to safeguard these important opportunities for women and girls.
At the heart of these cases is whether states can implement laws that preserve genuine equality. Instead of a ban being a denial of transgender athletes’ right to compete, which many activists unjustly claim, it is about upholding women’s rights to fair play. Title IX was designed to eliminate structural barriers for tens of millions of women and girls, but that guarantee of parity has been discarded under an ideology more concerned with soothing feelings than operating within objective realities.
The American public widely agrees with this direction. A May 2025 poll from Gallup found that nearly 70% of all U.S. adults believe transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender at birth. Support for athletes competing on teams that match their current gender identity rather than anatomy has fallen by 10 percentage points since 2021, around the time the issue started to garner wider public scrutiny.
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With the world’s attention turning to America for the forthcoming summer games, the question of who participates in women’s sport categories becomes more than a domestic debate. It becomes a matter of national reputation. Congress must move expeditiously to enshrine into federal law similar protections to those enacted at the state level. President Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to defending girls sports, so we should have every confidence he’d sign these civil rights protections into law.
Republican state attorneys general have done our part, and we eagerly await a just ruling from the Supreme Court saying so. Now, the politicians in Washington need to act. The U.S. must commit to sports categories defined by biological sex when fairness and women’s rights depend on that distinction. It’s up to policymakers at the local and federal levels, and the Supreme Court, to preserve fair opportunity for our daughters and their daughters, too.
Steve Marshall is the Attorney General of the State of Alabama.
