BOISE, Idaho — Think of this.

If you’re more than, say, 30 years old:

�–� What do you suppose the reaction would have been–from coaches and fellow pupils–when you were in high school if a boy wanted to play on a girls’ sports team?

�–� What do you suppose the reaction would have been–from coaches and fellow students–when you were in college if a man wanted to play on a women’s sports team?

That’s right. Such an idea would have been not only dismissed out of hand but also rejected with disbelief that anyone would suggest such a thing.

Why? Because this isn’t fair to girls or women.

Boys have significant physical advantages over girls, just as men have significant physical advantages over women. That’s reality.

The reason is simple: Boys and men have Y chromosomes, while girls and women don’t. That makes all the difference.

* * *

With that and much more in mind, Idaho in 2020 enacted its Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.

According to the merits-stage brief that Idaho filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, the act requires that public schools and higher-education institutions designate each sponsored sport as

�–� for males, men, or boys,

�–� for females, women, or girls, or

�–� as co-ed or mixed.

What’s wrong with that?

Well, the San Francisco-based federal-appellate court said it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider the challenge and has heard oral arguments. A decision is expected by June.

* * *

Before we get to the merits, let’s pick up where we left 58 weeks ago with the difference between sex and gender.

As you may have learned in, say, a seventh-grade life-sciences class, organisms that reproduce sexually–as opposed to asexually–have two sexes: Male and female. Males are he; females are she.

Gender is different from sex.

Gender is a construct of language.

In Romance languages, each noun has one of two genders: Masculine nouns are he, while feminine nouns are she.

By contrast, in Germanic languages, including English, each noun has one of three genders: Masculine nouns are he, feminine nouns are she, and neuter nouns are it.

The challenge to Idaho law is about sex, not gender.

No one should believe this is about gender.

* * *

Idaho asserts its “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act is a constitutionally permissible sex-based classification. It is a sex-based classification because it distributes benefits and burdens on the basis of sex. And it is constitutionally permissible because it is substantially related to Idaho’s important interest in promoting female athletic opportunities.”

Furthermore, “there is no fair way for males to compete with females in most sports, and testosterone suppression does not solve the problem. Because women’s and girls’ sports are not safe and fair when males compete, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act is constitutional no matter the level of scrutiny.”

* * *

The challengers disagree.

They assert the “law is not substantially related to Idaho’s asserted interest in promoting equal opportunities and safety for … women and girls.”

Why? Because athletes like the lead challenger “have no athletic advantage over … women. In the face of that critical defect in their case, (the) petitioners urge the (Supreme) Court to ignore the lack of fit between Idaho’s categorical ban and the purported justification for it. That argument flies in the face of the Equal Protection Clause, which, as (the Supreme) Court has recognized repeatedly, prohibits state laws that rest on overbroad generalizations about the sexes–even those that may be accurate for most people but not for individuals who fall outside the average description.”

* * *

Next week’s column by Dr. Randy Elf addresses a parallel challenge to West Virginia law.

COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF