Lankford Joins Other GOP Senators In Sending Letter To NCAA, Aiming To 'Protect Women's Sports'

With the start of fall sports just days away, Republican members of Congress are calling on the governing body of collegiate athletics, the NCAA, to ‘protect’ women’s sports.

They say the organization’s current policy undermines Title IX protections for female student-athletes and threatens the fundamental notion of fair play in sports.

"Biological women and girls should only be competing against other biological women and girls," said Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) at a 2023 news conference preceding the House vote on the so-called Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act.

Rep. Van Duyne and the GOP passed, along party lines, the legislation, which was very similar to laws Oklahoma and many other red states had already put in place, banning transgender women and girls from competing in female school sports.

The bill was never taken up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, with opponents saying a ban sends a message of discrimination against transgender women and is the wrong approach.

"If this is about elite sports competition," said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), "let's allow the relevant organizations involved in elite sports competition to do what they do, to set the framework and the boundaries and rules of engagement."

However, Republicans say the 'relevant organization' for collegiate sport, the NCAA, is failing women athletes with its current policy of allowing eligibility to be determined sport by sport, based on the participation rules of each individual sport's governing body.

In a letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker last week, nearly two dozen GOP senators, including Oklahoma's James Lankford, said, “Several organizations—including the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport—in addition to more than 20 states, have acted recently to protect women’s sports. We urge the NCAA to follow suit and take similar action to promote fair play.”

Transgender advocates say critics commonly exaggerate the prevalence of trans women competing in high school or college sports and say those who do aren't changing their identities just to gain a competitive advantage in a sport.

Lankford has said he has compassion for all involved in this issue but stresses cisgender women also have rights, and that should include not having to go up against athletes whose biological sex gives them a competitive advantage.

"This is something that is not a partisan issue, it's a human issue," Lankford (R-OK) Said at a June news conference. "It should be something that we should have great compassion on for every individual, but we should also speak out for the most basic element of common sense to say, ‘let's continue to be able to protect women's sports and allow women's sports to be able to thrive,'"