Over the past several weeks, Do No Harm has filed a series of amicus briefs to aid courts throughout the country as they continue grappling with questions concerning the legality of permitting biological males to participate in female sports.
In June, the Supreme Court confirmed that Title IX and the Constitution permit states to mandate sex-segregated sports teams. However, now percolating through various courts is the issue of whether states and federal-funding recipients may separate school sports by sex but then carve out exceptions based on athletes’ self-described “gender identity.”
Do No Harm stands with those who say “no” — and, by extension, with law and science.
The first case, Brown v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, was recently escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court through an emergency request by a young girl who alleges she was assaulted by a transgender-identifying male athlete during a girls’ sports tournament. She’s asking the Court to require Washington state officials to protect girls’ sports and uphold Title IX’s guarantee of safe and equal opportunities for women.
On October 9, 2026, Do No Harm filed its third amicus brief in the case, supporting this courageous girl. In briefs filed with the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court, we argue that “Title IX forbids — and science does not support — identity-based exceptions to sex-based sports teams.”
Specifically, we argue in our brief to the Supreme Court that, while the sex of the participants matters in sports, participants’ self-declared “gender identity” does not. Moreover, we make plain that sports programs that prioritize “identity” over sex violate Title IX.
The first of these points relies on the fact that sex is rooted in science, a reality inextricably tied to safety and fairness in sports. “Identity,” by contrast, is a psychological concept or feeling. Feelings do not matter more than biology in competitive sports and do not override concerns related to male participation in sporting events designed for adolescent girls.
In our second point, we explain that current practices enforced by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association and state officials violate Title IX. Under Title IX, recipients of federal funding may either create co-ed teams or sex-based teams. However, the choice is mutually exclusive, and, whichever arrangement is chosen, an “equal athletic opportunity” must be afforded for members of both sexes.
As our briefs recognize, in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026), the Supreme Court made clear that, under Title IX, biology provides the safety and fairness justifications for dividing school sports teams by biological sex. And since, often, mixed-sex teams could deny an equal athletic opportunity to females, funding recipients must “typically maintain separate women’s and men’s sports teams” to comply with Title IX.
When Washington chooses to separate teams by sex but then allows biological males to play on the women’s and girls’ teams, its separation of the sexes is not sanctioned by Title IX’s exclusive safety and fairness rationales for separation. In addition, by forcing women and girls to compete alongside biological males, Washington fails to afford an equal athletic opportunity to women and girls, endangering them and denying them fair play in contravention of Title IX’s prohibition on discriminating on the basis of biological sex.
Moreover, as B.P.J. confirms, the ongoing debate of medical and scientific evidence has not settled the claim that subjecting a male athlete to sex-rejecting interventions removes the advantage he has over female athletes.
These are not mere legal abstractions. In Brown v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, a 15-year-old female wrestler, K.M.K., alleges she was matched against and sexually assaulted by a male athlete during a girls’ tournament. In her complaint, K.M.K. details multiple sexually offensive acts, which she describes as not only horrific and humiliating but also as what led her to lose the match and, ultimately, her place as a winner in the tournament.
What courts decide in this and similar cases will affect the present and future safety of women and girls on athletic courts and fields.
Yet the gender-dysphoric male athletes subjected to dangerous medical interventions are themselves a second class of victims. As Do No Harm’s briefs detail, these so-called treatments lack evidentiary support for treating pediatric gender dysphoria; may worsen psychiatric symptoms; and can lead to a range of long-term health consequences, including adverse effects on bone health, cardiovascular and metabolic function, fertility, and much more.
Washington errs both by denying female athletes an “equal athletic opportunity” and by tacitly encouraging a regime of risky and unproven pediatric sex-rejecting interventions.
Other cases unfolding along these lines make equally vivid the need for courts to protect American children from the consequences of transgender ideology.
U.S. v. Maine Department of Education, now pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, asks whether the Pine Tree State’s “inclusive” school-athletics policies deny female athletes the opportunity to engage in fair competition. (Read our amicus brief here.)
Female Athletes United v. Ellison and U.S. v. Minnesota Department of Education, both pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, ask similar questions in the North Star State.
Do No Harm eagerly awaits the outcomes of these cases and the cessation of efforts by states and other federal funding recipients to undermine or ignore Title IX in the name of transgender ideology.
Justice demands that state lawlessness be condemned.
