Republican lawmakers in Virginia called on the Virginia High School League (VHSL) to protect women’s sports, after VHSL announced that it would continue to allow biological males who identify as transgender to play in women’s sports.
Lawmakers such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), and Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) called on the VHSL to “change course” after a spokesperson for VHSL told ABC8 News that the league would “not be removing transgender” athletes from “any of its women’s high school sports teams.”
This comes after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Wednesday protecting women’s sports from transgender athletes.
“We have not seen or received anything regarding the Executive Order,” Mike McCall, the director of communications for VHSL said in a statement, adding that VHSL would “continue following the current policy and the current law in Virginia.”
“Girls’ sports are for girls. Period,” Earle-Sears wrote in a post on X. “The Virginia High School League is refusing to follow federal law and President Trump’s executive order, putting our state at legal risk and young women in danger. Every female athlete deserves a level playing field—this is non-negotiable. Virginia High Schoo League must reverse course now.”
“Biological boys should not be competing against girls,” Youngkin wrote in a post on X. “This is just common sense. The Virginia High School League must change course immediately just like the NCAA. Virginia schools are at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal school funding if the VHSL doesn’t comply with President @realDonaldTrump’s Executive Order protecting girls sports.”
“Virginia’s girls deserve better than this,” Kiggans wrote in a post on X. “Despite yesterday’s Executive Order, @VHSL_ is continuing to allow transgender athletes to compete in high school girls’ sports. They are deliberately choosing to ignore that 80% of Americans agree on this issue. This is UNACCEPTABLE!”
As Breitbart News’s Warner Todd Huston previously reported, Trump’s Executive Order protecting women’s sports includes “several measures, the first of which is to re-write federal Title IX education rules to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender athletes to play as females.”
Less than 24 hours after Trump’s Executive Order, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that it had banned biological males from competing in women’s sports. The policy from the NCAA states: “A student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team.”