By Rachael Miller
Mikie Sherill was just elected governor of New Jersey on the premise that she is a moderate champion of women’s rights.
Her record, unfortunately, shows that she is anything but. Now that she is in the governor’s office, New Jersey residents will have to hold her feet to the fire and ensure she does not dismantle women’s rights in the state.
In the past two years alone, Sherrill has voted against every major piece of legislation in Congress that would protect women’s sports and single-sex spaces: The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a House resolution ensuring “sex” under Title IX means biological sex, and the Riley Gaines Women’s Sports Protection Act. In opposing these, she has rejected a simple reality: that men and women are biologically different.
The science is not up for debate. The American College of Sports Medicine states, “Adult males are stronger, more powerful, and faster than females of similar age and training status. The sex difference in athletic performance where endurance or muscular power is required is roughly 10-30% depending on the event.” Testosterone during male puberty means that men are taller with longer limbs, and have increased muscle mass, lower body fat, larger hearts, and larger lungs.
In other words, men have an innate biological advantage over women. Female athletes work just as hard, train just as seriously, and sacrifice just as much—but biology means they will never be able to compete with male-bodied athletes on a level playing field.
New Jersey residents understand this. Per recent polling, the majority of New Jersey voters, as well as New Jersey female voters, support legislation that keeps women’s sports female. Protecting women, for New Jersey voters, means protecting women’s single-sex spaces—and keeping men out.
If Sherill keeps this up as governor, she will not only be rejecting reality, but the voices of her constituents.
It gets worse when you look at her response—or lack thereof—to the women’s prison crisis in New Jersey. In 2021, New Jersey adopted a policy that allows inmates to be housed based on self-declared gender identity, regardless of sex. Under this policy, a biological male named Demi Minor, convicted of manslaughter and carjacking, was transferred to Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.
By 2022, he impregnated two women and allegedly sexually assaulted a third, Lauren Mitchell.
Mitchell has since filed a lawsuit stating she was sexually assaulted three times by Minor and begged for reassignment. Prison staff allegedly ignored her, and she described the state’s actions as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
While this was going on, Mikie Sherrill was nowhere to be found. Where she will be as governor remains to be seen.
Public records show that there are approximately 108 transgender-identifying inmates across New Jersey’s nine state prisons—42 of them at Edna Mahan alone. That means hundreds, if not thousands, of women are being forced to share intimate spaces with male-bodied individuals in the name of “inclusion.”
Despite the fact that 91% of New Jersey voters and 92% of New Jersey women voters report concern over men in women’s prisons, Mikie Sherrill has yet to say a word.
Sherrill’s unwillingness to speak out—both in Congress and in her own backyard—shows exactly where her priorities lie: not with her constituents in New Jersey or with American women suffering the consequences of men in their sports and single-sex spaces, but with the activist class and other elites in her party who demand ideological conformity above all else.
Time and again, she has proven that she is more concerned about appeasing fringe interest groups than about defending the rights of women and girls.
The pattern is unmistakable. When women athletes are forced to compete against biological males, Sherrill has voted against protecting them. When women prisoners are assaulted by men placed in their facilities, Sherrill has stayed silent. When voters say clearly, loudly, that they want single-sex spaces preserved, Sherrill has ignored them.
That may have been acceptable behavior for a member of Congress operating within the safety of party-line politics, but the governor’s office is different. As the chief executive of New Jersey, Sherrill will be directly accountable to the people whose rights and safety depend on her decisions. If she continues to side with ideological activists instead of everyday New Jersey women, she will quickly find that voters’ patience has its limits.
Rachael Miller is a resident of Bergen County, NJ.