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Journal Gazette
A fight for fairness: Women's sports deserve shield from radical ideology

September 23, 2025

By Sen. Liz Brown

I spent a recent weekend at my alma mater, Notre Dame, to celebrate 50 years of women’s varsity sports.

It was through the literal blood, sweat and tears of women on the track, turf and field that made the case for sports inclusion in 1975. Women were given opportunities for scholarships, competitions and their own spaces, similar to what male athletes had long enjoyed.

I benefited from women having these athletic opportunities as a varsity fencer at Notre Dame. I had to spend long hours training, traveling and competing, all while balancing my studies.

For decades, society celebrated women’s sports and our spaces were protected. Then came in radical transgender ideology in the past decade, and women’s sports and women’s spaces suffered.

The inclusion and opportunities that female athletes worked so hard for could be eliminated when just one man deemed to declare himself a woman and outperform women athletes through mere biology of being bigger and faster.

Just ask Riley Gaines how quickly one male can cheat to cancel all the years of training and competing that a woman does. Or look to leftist Minnesota, where the state division of USA Fencing decided simply to cancel all female-only competitions just last month.

Women are losing opportunities because of this madness.

In 2022, I was pleased a bill was introduced in the Indiana legislature to ban males from women’s sports from kindergarten through college. At the time, however, the NCAA (which is headquartered in Indianapolis) was on the transgender bandwagon, allowing biological males to compete against female athletes.

Shockingly, we saw firsthand the hold the NCAA had on our state when that bill was amended in the House Education Committee to remove postsecondary education athletics. I knew the bill would pass, and it did. It even withstood Gov. Eric Holcomb’s veto.

But on principle, I could not support that bill in its weak, watered-down version. As a female college athlete, I knew we needed to stand up for female college athletes.

This year, that wrong was righted through Indiana’s House Enrolled Act 1041, which finally banned biological males from women’s sports at the college level.

I spoke passionately on the Senate floor urging support for the bill.

Drawing from my own perspective as a college athlete, I said, “If I don’t get on the medal stand, I want it to be because a woman beat me. Not because a guy who couldn’t make it on the men’s team came over and played against me because he wanted a medal. That’s not right. I don’t want my daughters or granddaughter getting beat up because some guy is playing against them.”

That bill passed the Senate with broad support, 42-6.

The Trump administration is also rightfully taking steps to protect women from biological males in their spaces. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February that forced the NCAA to change its transgender athlete participation policy.

Of course, laws and executive orders unsurprisingly find themselves under legal fire from the transgender lobby. Two cases are before the U.S. Supreme Court from Idaho and West Virginia to protect girls’ sports.

I proudly signed onto an amicus brief just filed at the court. I believe these straightforward laws, which have the support of the American people, will ultimately be found constitutional at the highest court in the land.

Being at Notre Dame among a multitude of female athletes reminded me why this fight to protect women’s sports and women’s spaces matters.

These athletes competed at different times in the fight for women’s sports. Some at the beginning, when inclusion was brand new and they knew all the effort it took to get them there. Some in the middle years, where women’s sports were taken for granted. And some in these recent years, where they saw how quickly women’s sports could be eviscerated by men posing as women.

I pledge I will continue to stand on principle against delusions that take away opportunities for women.

Read the column on the Journal Gazette website here.