The Supreme Court heard oral arguments recently in a case that will determine if men can participate on women’s sports teams; the Washington Reporter spoke with Republicans from across the country, who showed up at the Supreme Court to rally for women’s sports.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R., Idaho) told the Reporter in an interview on the steps of the Supreme Court that he’s “very proud” that his home state is one of the two being represented at the court. Idaho, he noted, was “the first state to ban transgender women in women’s sports. That was a huge step” that didn’t surprise him, because “Idahoans have common sense, and what this is is common sense.”
“We’ve got to protect Title IX, protect women’s rights, protect their ability to get scholarships to move on to college and other things.” Throughout the day, speakers noted that virtually no federally elected Democrats have sided with their Republican counterparts in voting to defend women’s sports.
“There’s a lot of them that agree with us who don’t feel that they can vote that way, and that’s too bad. But we [still] need to get it through the House and the Senate and signed by the president. It’s amazing to me that we’re even here, that we’re discussing this, because it makes so much sense. You would think it would just be natural, but it’s not,” he said.
For Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.), a legendary football coach in his own right, the issue of banning men from competing in women’s sports has been a longtime priority. Tuberville “didn’t just vote on it,” he told the Reporter in an interview. “I made three bills and put them on the floor and tried to work on votes on both sides.” But, he added, “it was like pulling teeth from the Democrats. They all stand together. I don’t understand it. Half of them over there know that it’s not fair, and I’m thinking that a lot of them are saying ‘we’ve got to stick with our party, but it’s not going to pass anyway.’”
Tuberville predicted that, following the oral arguments for the cases, some Democrats would vote for GOP-led legislation that would ban men from competing in women’s sports, in part because “I don’t think they [Democrats] thought it would go this far.” Should the Supreme Court side against the female plaintiffs, Tuberville cautioned that the ramifications could extend to the military and beyond; that, he said, would lead “our moral values [to] just disintegrate.”
Tuberville’s predecessor in the Senate, Sen. Doug Jones (D., Ala.), is now running against him for Governor of Alabama this year, but Tuberville is confident that he will beat Jones once again.
Jones, Tuberville said, “would be totally for what the Democrats believe in. They want transgenders to have transgender surgery at a young age, which is ridiculous… He hasn’t made any statements since he’s been out of the Senate since I took his place, but he’s been on the side of almost every issue that the Democrats have pushed for the last four years during the Biden administration to make sure that everything they pushed came to fruition… Alabama is a state that believes in women’s sports, men’s sports, and trying to help everybody.”
Legal observers speculate that the Supreme Court will take the side of women’s athletes.
But, Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project (APP), told the Reporter that “if the Supreme Court rules against us today, all 27 of those laws in states [that protect women’s sports] will be wiped out, meaning boys will be able to enter into girls’ private spaces — their locker rooms and their sports. It’s an absolute nightmare.”
“The good news,” Schilling said, “is that we’re going to win. This is a Supreme Court that has delivered victory after victory for the American family and for our daughters. They just ruled that laws that protect kids from sex change procedures are protected under the Constitution, so I’m very optimistic we’re going to win, but it would be an absolute nightmare if they rule against us.”
Schilling was one of many gathered outside the high court who noted the juxtaposition between Democratic Party voters and Democratic Party lawmakers on the issue of women’s sports — the Reporter spotted several attendees in the crowd with signs denoting that they are Democrats for Title IX. Schilling, who has been engaged in pro-family policy for years, traced the split back to the Obama era.
“It all comes back to Obama,” he explained. “If you go back to 2008, Obama appears moderate. He appears like a reasonable Democrat. He doesn’t support gay marriage. He supports civil unions. By the end of his administration, he had changed the rules and regulations at the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education to include gender identity and civil rights law as protected on the basis of sex. So what does that mean? That means with health insurance plans under Obamacare, if you cover mastectomies for cancer victims, you now have to cover them for people that have gender dysphoria and want to try and become men. This is absolutely insane, and it all started with Obama. Obama was the linchpin that turned this whole movement against women.”
Looking to the future, Schilling sounded optimistic, because “Democratic politicians are out of step with voters on basically every issue, including with their own party.”
“The polling has been clear,” Schilling said, “and it’s growing in our direction. In 2021, according to CNN, 65 percent of Americans wanted to get men out of girls sports. Today, it’s 81 percent to 19 percent. They are losing the battle of public opinion because Americans are smart. They know that this is an issue about fairness. It’s about protecting our daughters and making sure they don’t get hurt on the sports field. It’s as simple as that, and that’s why we’re winning, and Democrats…are going to suffer political consequences in the midterms over it.”
