Girls Sports

A measure to keep boys out of girls sports will appear on the ballot in Arizona this November thanks to brave activists like elite volleyball player Kaylie Ray.

HCR 2003, which the Arizona Senate approved in a 16-12 vote along party lines last week, requires schools and kids’ athletic clubs to provide single-sex changing areas and assign competitors to “male,” “female,” or “co-ed” teams based on sex.

The state House of Representatives passed HCR 2003 in a 32-25 vote in February. Arizonans will vote on the measure in November.

Ray knows first-hand the importance of protecting women’s sports and spaces. She faced San Jose State University’s (SJSU) Blaire Fleming, a male, on the volleyball court in 2024.

As captain of Utah State University’s women’s volleyball team, Ray led her teammates to forfeit a match against SJSU.

She shared her experience with the Arizona Senate Education Committee, which was considering HCR 2003, in March.

“This player had explosive athleticism and attacked with power that was clearly unmatched by any female athlete in the gym,” she explained. “The jumping ability and physicality of the male athlete was also far superior to anyone else’s on the court.”

“My teammates and I feared for our safety, and we were disheartened by the lack of fairness,” she continued, concluding:

Thankfully, most Arizona senators sided with Ray. Among the minority, however, was State Senator Catherine Miranda, who argued Ray and her teammates just weren’t competitive enough to face down a man.

“You grew up one way, I grew up a different way,” Sen. Miranda said in a now viral clip from March. “I would have taken on a man in a heartbeat.”

She claimed she had experienced being only girl on a boys team before, evidently referring to when she was the only girl on her local little league team — hardly D1 volleyball.

“Women like me, we have a different opinion,” she told Ray. “So how competitive do you think you are?”

Sen. Miranda’s astonishing lack of awareness did not ruffle Ray. “As elite level athletes, I would say we’re very competitive,” she responded, reminding the legislator women who wanted to compete against men could choose to compete in the “co-ed” category under HCR 2003.

Later, Ray told Fox News Digital:

State Sen. Miranda twice voted against HCR 2003. She also voted in favor of amending the measure to allow schools and clubs to assign athletes to teams and changing spaces based on characteristics other than sex.

Now that HCR 2003 has passed the Arizona legislature, Ray hopes State Sen. Miranda will accept reality.

“This is what the American public wants: safe places for our daughters to achieve and excel,” she told Fox News Digital. “It’s not about exclusion; it’s about including those girls who are losing opportunities to boys.”

“Of course, I would hope that by looking at facts and biological truth she would come to [that] conclusion … but it seems unlikely.”

The Daily Citizen thanks Kaylie Ray and all others going above and beyond to protect girls sports and spaces in Arizona.

Additional Articles and Resources

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UPenn Will Strip ‘Lia’ Thomas of Medals, Apologize to Female Athletes

SJSU Hired Same Law Firm to Simultaneously Defend and Investigate Male Athlete on Women’s Team

NCAA and San Jose State ‘Transgender’ Volley Player Usurp Women’s Rights

Four Women’s Volleyball Teams Forfeit — Won’t Play Team with a Man

Photo courtesy of Independent Council on Women’s Sports

Becky Pepper-Jackson, the transgender-identified boy at the center of a highly anticipated Supreme Court case, won two awards at the girls state AAA track and field championships last month.

Pepper-Jackson, who sued West Virginia in 2021 over its law protecting girls sports, took first place in girls shot put on May 23. He outthrew second-place finisher Paislee Babiczuk by more than two feet.

Pepper-Jackson also finished fourth in the state in girls discus.

West Virginia Attorney General John McCusky sent a letter regarding Pepper Jackson’s dominant performance to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on State of West Virginia v. BPJ later this month.

The Court’s ruling in BPJ and another, similar case, Little v. Hecox, will determine whether states can uphold laws separating sports by sex.

“As a high school sophomore, BPJ is not finishing ‘near the back of the pack,” McCuskey wrote, “but is instead defeating every — or nearly every — female in the state in these events.”

McCusky’s letter strikes at the heart of Pepper-Jackson and his ACLU attorneys’ case, which argues he experiences no physical advantages to female athletes because he never went through puberty.  

In its November brief, the ACLU claimed Pepper-Jackson chose not to participate in speed and endurance track events because he was “too slow” and “placed near the back of the pack.” Only “through hard work and practice,” did he improve enough to start competing in post season events, the brief contends.

But Pepper-Jackson’s performance at state — as a sophomore, no less — doesn’t align with the ACLU’s description.

“The developments from the state meet … just underscore the fact that no amount of testosterone suppression or intervention can undo the very real differences that males have over women,” Suzanne Beecher, an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal firm which argued on behalf of women’s sports before the Court, told Fox News Digital.

The ACLU West Virginia’s Mollie Kennedy spun Pepper-Jackson’s state win quite differently, emphasizing he had not uniformly out-performed all female athletes in his events this season.  

“[Pepper-Jackson is] just trying to play sports and they become the focus of all this community bullying because someone has decided their appearance indicates some kind of unfairness,” Kennedy concluded in an interview with a local outlet.

Sigh.

Let’s start with Pepper-Jackson’s record. While he did not take first place in all his events this year, he placed first in most of them.

Pepper-Jackson threw 12 times prior to state — six shot put and six discus. He took first in four of the shot put and discus competitions, each. He placed second and third in the remaining two shot put competitions and second in the remaining two discus throws.

Each time Pepper-Jackson stepped on the podium, he displaced a female athlete who worked hard to be there. It is unbearably unjust.

But let’s suppose, for a moment, Pepper-Jackson never won. He never stepped on the podium and never stole a medal from a deserving girl. It wouldn’t matter. Women deserve access to single-sex sports, regardless of prospective male competitors’ athletic prowess.

People who ask women to accommodate men with sexual identity issues by making themselves uncomfortable are engaging in misogyny.

To address Kennedy’s other points, advocating for single-sex sports and spaces is not bullying. Title IX mandates educational programs which receive federal funds separate sports, bathrooms and locker rooms by biological sex.

The criticism directed toward Pepper-Jackson or, rather, the people allowing Pepper-Jackson to play girls sports, has nothing to do with his appearance and everything to do with biology. Every cell in our bodies is sexed male or female. That designation, which occurs at conception, dictates the formation of our bodies.

The pubertal process plays a pivotal role in development. Preventing someone from entering puberty, or pumping them full of wrong-sex hormones in a mockery of an “opposite-sex” puberty, is cruel and unusual medical experimentation which can cause life-long medical problems.

But a boy who doesn’t go through puberty is not a girl.

A boy who is pumped full of estrogen is not a girl.

They are still boys at a cellular level. And they still posses musculoskeletal and vascular advantages over women.

Society did not “decide” men have biological advantages over women in most athletics. That is reality. Kennedy and her ilk dislike reality but, try as they might, they can’t make it go away.

The Daily Citizen is hopeful the Supreme Court will allow states to uphold biological reality this June. Unfortunately, for the girls who competed against Pepper-Jackson at the West Virginia state track and field finals, it’s already too late. The harm has been done. A boy’s desires were prioritized over girls’ athletic aspirations, hard work and physical boundaries.

And why would they object? We know what happens to girls who stand up for themselves.

In 2024, at the Harrison County girls track and field finals, five middle school girls peacefully refused to throw against Pepper-Jackson, then in eighth grade. Lincoln Middle School subsequently stopped the protestors from competing in their next meet.

The girls’ parents sued the Harrison County Board of Education and, with the support of then Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, were able to obtain a judge’s order allowing them to compete as planned.

But I don’t imagine students are overly eager to stand up for themselves after that fiasco.

The Daily Citizen begs moms, dads, grandpas and grandmas to stand in the gap. Be bold in defense of your girls — and boys. Do not apologize for defending women’s sports and biological reality.

To learn more about male incursions into female sports, and what you can do to help, read the Daily Citizen’s article, “‘Save Girls Sports’ on the November Ballot”

Additional Articles and Resources

Top 5 Moments From Supreme Court Arguments Over Girls Sports

Supreme Court to Hear Title IX Girls Sports Cases

Middle School Girls Who Protested ‘Trans’ Athlete Are Banned From Future Competition

Male Athlete Wins Three Girls California Track and Field Titles — Again

New Study: Testosterone Blockers and Female Hormones Don’t Erase Male-Female Athletic Differences

Male and Female Biology Matters

World Athletics Announces Testing Protocols to Keep Men Out of Women’s Athletics

Boys Atop Girls’ Podiums: Where Are the Dads?

Girls Sports Coaches are Incentivized to Recruit Men — Parents Shouldn’t Let Them

DOJ Lawsuit Describes California Department of Education’s Infuriating Treatment of Girls

The California Interscholastic Federation ‘Gender Diversity Toolkit’ Reveals Extent of Radical Transgender Participation Policies

Yes, Girls Care When Boys Take Their Trophies

Yet Another Man Steals Women’s Trophies

HHS Releases Report on Harms of Sex-Rejecting Procedures for Minors

A male athlete took three state titles at the California girls track and field championships last weekend, leaving female athletes behind for the second year in a row.

AB Hernandez, a boy who “identifies” as a girl, took first place in the girls high jump and triple jump on Saturday, the same events he won in last year’s championship. He also took third in the girls long jump. Last year, he placed second.

Female athletes displaced by Hernandez shared the podium with him.

The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) instituted this policy days before last year’s track and field finals to ward off a federal lawsuit. President Donald Trump had threatened to withhold federal funding to the California Department of Education for allowing Hernandez, a boy, to participate in the competition.

“This is not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls,” the president wrote on social media after Hernandez qualified for state in May 2025.

“This is a totally ridiculous situation!!!”

CIF’s split-podium solution did not satisfy the Department of Justice, which filed a scathing lawsuit against the California Department of Education for “illegal sex discrimination” last July.

But some, like the opinion writer who decried the “pathetic right-wing crusade against a high school track athlete” in the Orange County Register this weekend, argue it works well enough.

Hernandez gets to compete with girls. Girls don’t lose their rightful spots. What more could female athletes ask for?

Sigh.

First and foremost, CIF did not start allowing displaced female athletes to stand next to Hernandez until the last three competitions of the season. Prior to that, he competed in nine regular season meets and two post-season meets, where he jumped a total of thirty times.

He placed first in 28 of them.

If CIF acknowledges biology matters in its most important competitions of the year, why would it fail to implement a split-podium strategy in all its competitions?

I suspect CIF doesn’t care for female athletes or biology at all but, rather, its image, which becomes exponentially more visible during the finals.

But it wouldn’t matter if CIF proposed adopting a split-podium strategy all year. It’s still a woefully inadequate solution to a problem with an obvious fix — separating sports by sex.

Just as female athletes should have equal opportunity to compete in sports, they should have an equal opportunity to celebrate hard-won victories. That includes relishing standing atop of the podium, alone, in the space they earned.

Adults should not expect girls to sacrifice their experience of achievement to ease the discomfort of boys with sexual identity issues. Boys with sexual identity confusion should not feel entitled to spaces created specifically for female athletes who win.

Adults who belittle girls for being too “selfish” to relinquish their winning moment to transgender-identified boys are engaging in misogyny.

Allowing male athletes to share podiums with female athletes doesn’t address the significant safety issues associated with allowing boys to play in girls sports.

One recurring problem is forcing members of the opposite sex to share bathrooms and locker rooms. Hernandez’ use of the girls’ locker room while he played girls volleyball is part of an ongoing Title IX suit against Jurupa Valley Unified School District.

Hadeel Hazimeh and Madison McPherson, who played volleyball with Hernandez, sued the district last fall for forcing them to play volleyball and share a locker room with a male teammate — Hernandez. The duo left the team over concerns about modesty and their physical safety.

“Over the year, I witnessed the boy go through puberty,” McPherson spoke at a press conference held by California Family Council in February. “No girl on the volleyball team grew in strength and agility like he did.”

When she raised concerns with her school, McPherson said administrators “treated [her] as if [she] was the problem.”

“I witnessed many girls get hurt, including my sister, and the school did nothing,” she recalled.

Adults who sympathize with Hernandez often drown out the experiences of victims like McPherson and Hazimeh.

Some, like the Orange County Register columnist, characterize criticism of Hernandez as “picking on high schoolers.”

“It’s all pretty pathetic,” he writes.

Others go out of their way to lift Hernandez up. California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer publicly wished Hernandez would do “very well” at state in a video posted to X.

The role of the Governor is to protect Californians, and to stand between them and danger.

That's a role I take very, very seriously, particularly when it comes to trans youth. pic.twitter.com/N6huW9NSuZ

— Tom Steyer (@TomSteyer) May 29, 2026

Supporters of Hernandez seem to view him as one person against the world. His copious victims, in their minds, do not count against him, but make him an underdog — one offender bullied by a mass of people he offended against.

Outside this narrative, in reality, Hernandez is not the victim. He made choices which injured hundreds of girls in California — every single one he ever competed against.

His choices secured him dozens of accolades meant for girls. But they also make him a justified target of censure for his treatment of female athletes.

The Daily Citizen will not apologize for defending women’s sports and biological reality. Christian believers shouldn’t either.

To learn more about male incursions into female sports, and what you can do to help, read the Daily Citizen’s article, “‘Save Girls Sports’ on the November Ballot”

Additional Articles and Resources

Boys Atop Girls’ Podiums: Where Are the Dads?

Female Athletes Beg California Interscholastic Federation to Keep Boys Out of Girls Sports and Locker Rooms

Girls Volleyball Team Forfeits Game to Avoid Playing Boy

DOJ Lawsuit Describes California Department of Education’s Infuriating Treatment of Girls

Feds Pressure California After Boy Wins in Girls Track and Field Championship

Feds Sue California Department of Education, Interscholastic Federation for ‘Illegal Sex Discrimination’

The California Interscholastic Federation ‘Gender Diversity Toolkit’ Reveals Extent of Radical Transgender Participation Policies

California Sues DOJ Over ‘Transgender’ Athlete Ban

Washington School District Buries Female Wrestler’s Sexual Assault Complaint Against Male Opponent

Feds Open Yet Another Title IX Investigation Into Loudoun County Schools

Photo Credit: Kirby Lee/Getty Images