Adobe Stock
CV NEWS FEED // The University System of Georgia Board of Regents, which is responsible for governing the state’s schools and libraries, passed a resolution requesting the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) to ban men from competing in women’s sports.
The resolution passed on October 8, according to OnlineAthens, and it reads: “Biologically female student-athletes could be put at a competitive disadvantage when student-athletes who are biologically male or who have undergone masculinizing hormone therapy compete in female athletic competitions.”
OnlineAthens states that the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes has already banned biological males from competing in women’s sports, and that the resolution urged the NCAA and NJCAA to create a similar policy.
The Georgia High School Association has required students to participate in sports according to biological gender since 2022.
In 2022, Georgia held the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships, where Lia Thomas — a biological male on cross-sex hormones — competed as a female and won the 500-meter freestyle event. Thomas tied for fifth place for the 200-meter with Riley Gaines, but only Thomas was allowed to take the trophy home. Gaines became a women’s sports activist and testified in the Senate after the experience, as CatholicVote previously reported.
Gaines stated during her July 2023 testimony: “I don’t believe trans athletes should be banned from playing sports — of course not. I just want everyone to compete where it’s fair and where it’s safe. I don’t understand why that’s overly controversial.”
Besides discussing the unfair advantage Thomas had as a biological male competing against women, Gaines explained the trauma of sharing a locker room with a biological male. She said that she and her teammates “only became aware we’d be undressing next to a man when we had to see a man undressing while we were simultaneously undressing.”
When Thomas competed as a male before his “transition,” he ranked 554th in the 200-meter freestyle.
