Texas Attorney General is suing the NCAA for allegedly engaging in deceptive practices by marketing events exclusively for female athletes while simultaneously allowing trans-identified males to compete.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit in the 99th Judicial Court for Lubbock County. The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent the NCAA from allowing men who identify as female to participate in women’s sports.
In the suit, Paxton contends that the NCAA has violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which aims to protect consumers from false or misleading business practices.
“The NCAA is intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women by deceptively changing women's competitions into co-ed competitions,” the attorney general stated in a Sunday announcement. He added, “When people watch a women's volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women — not biological males pretending to be something they are not. Radical 'gender theory' has no place in college sports.”
Paxton asserts that consumers want to support female athletes, and the NCAA should label any events involving men competing as “mixed” rather than “women's” competitions.
"The NCAA is further engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by failing to disclose to consumers which participants in 'women's' sporting events are women and which are men, leaving consumers who want to purchase goods and services associated with women in women's sporting events confused and frustrated,” the legal document states.
"Disclosure of all male participants in women's sporting events or rebranding of the event as 'mixed' or 'co-ed' would allow consumers the choice of whether to purchase goods and services associated with the event, whether in support or protest, and allow rival teams, players, and member schools to decide whether to participate in the event," it continued.
The filing describes allowing men to compete in women's sports as “inherently unfair and unsafe” due to the biological differences between the two sexes. “When female athletes are forced to compete against men in women's sports, they are deprived of titles, records, medals, scholarships, and opportunities to win; opportunities to participate in a fair and safe environment; and the ancillary benefits that sports participation provides,” the lawsuit argues.
Earlier this year, the University of Wyoming women’s volleyball team made headlines by forfeiting a match against San Jose State University because the school permitted a man to compete on the women’s team. Similarly, Utah State University chose not to force its women’s volleyball team to participate in a scheduled game against SJSU on October 23.
Women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines, along with dozens of female athletes, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA earlier this year for allowing biological males to compete on women's teams.
