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CV NEWS FEED // A number of high school student athletes in New York are set to walk off sports fields later this month in protest of allowing boys to participate in girls’ sports, according to an exclusive report from the New York Post.
The Coalition to Protect Kids New York is organizing the statewide walkout, “Walk Off for Fairness Day,” which will take place on October 24, according to the Post.
Coalition spokeswoman Ayesha Kreutz said that the walkout “will give [girls] a safe opportunity to make their voices heard.”
“So many of these young women are afraid of speaking out, so they’re forced to watch as 50 years of female athletic progress gets washed away by destructive ideologues,” Kreutz said. “Girls are not second class citizens, so why are they being treated that way?”
The planned walkout is set to take place just weeks before New York citizens vote on Amendment One, which would enshrine in the state constitution the prohibition of “discrimination” on the basis of “age… sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”
According to the website NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, the NY State Human Rights Law, a current non-discrimination law, “prohibits discrimination on the basis of ‘age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status, sex, marital status or disability’ in employment, housing, education, credit, and access to public accommodations.
The Catholic Bishops of New York are among those who have expressed opposition to Amendment One, as CatholicVote previously reported.
According to the Post, one high schooler planning to participate in the walkout is Millie McCormack, a student dancer.
“I don’t think it’s right for men to be in our safe spaces,” McCormack said. “We worked hard for places on our teams. Boys have physical advantages we don’t have.”
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Across the nation, efforts remain ongoing to protect women and girls’ privacy in locker rooms and safety on sports fields, especially after the Biden administration Department of Education in April announced a rewrite of Title IX that would include prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.”
Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Rachel Rouleau said that the rewrite was “a slap in the face to women and girls who have fought long and hard for equal opportunities.”
She decried that the rewrite would damage students’ privacy, parental rights, and female sports.
“The [Biden] administration continues to ignore biological reality, science, and common sense, and women are suffering as a result,” Rouleau said.
The Title IX rewrite has been met with several lawsuits aiming to prevent it from going into effect. In August, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows the temporary injunctions so far in place against the Title IX rewrite to remain while several lower courts consider the cases.
Pro-woman activist Riley Gaines, a 12-time All-American collegiate swimmer, has also been outspoken against allowing men and boys to compete in female-only sports. Gaines testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this June and at a December 2023 House subcommittee hearing in defense of women and girls in sports.
At the subcommittee hearing, Subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-MI, who is also opposed to boys competing in female sports, had asked Gaines, “Why is it patently unfair to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports?”
Gaines answered: “Look at what’s happened. We don’t see females entering into men’s sports and dominating. This is only happening one way. That way being males entering into women’s sports.”
Gaines had also said at the hearing: “Common-sense Americans know intuitively that this is not fair to women.”
