TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey Senator Michael Testa has called for the New Jersey Legislature to advance a proposal he sponsors that would protect women’s sports, in light of recent congressional action intended to preserve the spirit of Title IX.
Testa’s bill, the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” requires participation in school-sanctioned sports to be based on biological sex at birth.
It provides that public and nonpublic schools, as well as institutions of higher education, designate athletic or sports teams on the basis of biological sex. The bill also prohibits any athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls from being open to biological males.
“You only need to see the way biologically male athletes like Lia Thomas tower over their female competition to realize that transgender athletes have an unfair advantage,” said Testa. “It’s a bigger problem than just the appearance of unfairness, it’s increasingly borne out in the final results of competitions where women have been crowded off the winners’ podium by transgender athletes. If we want our daughters to have the same opportunity to train hard, compete, and win that their mothers enjoyed under Title IX, we have a responsibility to act now to protect women’s sports.”
With more biological men participating in competitive female athletics, Testa said legislators have a responsibility to act to maintain the protections and fairness long offered by Title IX.
The “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023” was recently passed by the House of Representatives in Congress, amending Title IX to “provide that for purposes of determining compliance with Title IX of such Act in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”