If you had asked me 22 years ago what one of the biggest cultural battles would be in the mid-2020s, I never would have guessed the issue ripping the country apart would involve keeping men who think they’re women out of girls’ sports. Not in a million years. Yet here we stand, arguing with mentally deranged leftists about basic biological realities like the distinction between males and females.
Colorado currently enforces a law that allows transgender-identifying males to participate in female sports—an indulgence of a young person’s delusions and an egregious encouragement of mental illness. However, this could soon change.
Colorado School District 49, located just outside Colorado Springs, now leads a coalition of seven other districts in challenging the law. The districts filed a lawsuit in May against the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Colorado Attorney General, and the Colorado High School Activities Association.
That’s a lot of Colorados.
Last week, however, the Colorado High School Activities Association settled with the plaintiffs, delivering a huge win for girls’ sports.
District 49 pursued the lawsuit after officials adopted rules last year requiring all school sports teams to divide athletes by biological sex. Superintendent Peter Hilts stated that he set clear rules concerning biology after he noticed more men trying to compete as women around the country. District 49 filed its lawsuit on May 9 to prevent the district from facing penalties that the governing body of Colorado sports might impose.
“I would never want my daughters to compete against a boy; that would be unfair,” Hilts told The Daily Wire. The settlement removes the Colorado High School Activities Association from the lawsuit—which continues in Colorado federal court—and gives all eight districts protections from the CHSAA.
Bylaws for the organization say, “Member schools shall ensure that all students have equal access and opportunities to participate in activities and athletics without unlawful discrimination based on disability, race, creed, color, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, age, national origin, or ancestry.”
“We didn’t want a state agency to sanction our coaches or our student-athletes for advocating privacy, fairness, and dignity,” Hilts added. He called the settlement a win for common sense—Lord knows the world suffers a shortage of that.
“Before the settlement, coaches would have had to self-censor or worry about what would happen if they spoke out about men competing in women’s sports,” Hilts explained. “The association could have taken action against coaches. They could have said coaches and athletes were being unsportsmanlike. They could have banned teams from postseason play, and they could have disqualified athletes from championships.”
The CHSAA told The Daily Wire that it “has never penalized a school or district for its policies on this issue, nor has it dictated what those policies should be.”
“At no point before filing this lawsuit did the plaintiffs engage in any dialogue with CHSAA,” a spokesman said. “They made no outreach to inquire about our policies, our procedures, or the steps we had already taken to support schools navigating these issues. This litigation consumed time and resources without producing any change to how CHSAA operates. The settlement alters nothing about our policies, our practices, or our authority.”
Michael Francisco, the lead attorney for School District 49, said he hopes the settlement inspires other districts to adopt policies that protect the integrity of sports.
“To our mind, CHSAA’s decision to settle leaves it to Colorado districts to decide whether they want to adopt a policy governing biological sex in sports like the plaintiff districts,” Francisco said. Hilts added that he hopes the win encourages state lawmakers to reflect President Donald Trump’s executive order keeping men out of women’s sports.
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