‘Save Women’s Sports’ activists react to chaotic SCOTUS hearing

Tuesday’s Supreme Courtroom listening to on trans athletes in girls’s sports activities raised confidence that almost all of justices will aspect with the authorized protection to save lots of girls’s sports activities and uphold state bans towards organic males in these sports activities.

However some activists are removed from happy with the way in which the listening to went.

A number of feminine athletes concerned within the case and others who gathered exterior the court docket in help of the cultural motion informed Fox Information Digital their reactions to the listening to, the arguments and the judges’ questions.

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Reactions to the listening to amongst these girls ranged from hopeful optimism a couple of groundbreaking ruling to light disappointment on the judges’ positions and selection of phrases:

The defendants

Feminine athletes who’re events to the case converse exterior the U.S. Supreme Courtroom after justices heard arguments difficult the state’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’s sports activities on January 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. The U.S. Supreme Courtroom will wade into the topical difficulty of transgender athletes in women’ and girls’s sports activities on January 13. (Oliver Contreras/AFP)

Madison Kenyan

Kenyan, a former girls’s cross nation and monitor runner from Idaho State, is a voluntary defendant within the Little v. Hecox case, which she determined to affix after having to compete towards a trans athlete her freshman 12 months in 2019.

“It stuffed me with pleasure and hope for future generations. The rights of states to guard girls’s athletics ought to by no means be doubtful. I am glad to see so many individuals standing up and supporting one thing so easy and true.”

Mary Kate Marshall

Marshall was Kenyan’s teammate at Idaho State and needed to acquire expertise competing towards the trans athlete with Kenyan, then joined the trigger alongside together with her teammate.

“It is at all times unhappy to see individuals deceived by the lie that males can grow to be girls. No quantity of hormones can do this. I stay hopeful that extra individuals will see organic actuality for what it’s: true and unchangeable.”

Lainey Armistead

Armistead, a former workforce captain of the West Virginia State College girls’s soccer workforce, intervened in protection of West Virginia sports activities legislation within the case of BPJ v. West Virginia.

“It has been a protracted journey to get to the Supreme Courtroom, so it was extremely significant for me to see the argument in individual. It was an incredible expertise and I am actually hopeful that the court docket will defend girls’s sports activities.”

THE SCOTUS HEARING WILL BE A TURNING POINT IN THE CULTURE WAR OVER TRANS ATHLETES IN WOMEN’S SPORTS

The demonstrators

Brooke Slusser

Brooke Slusser, former San Jose State College girls’s volleyball participant, together with her mother and father, Paul and Kim Slusser. (Courtesy of Kim Slusser)

Slusser, a former girls’s volleyball co-captain at San Jose State College, sued the NCAA, Mountain West Convention and representatives of her college after discovering in 2024 {that a} teammate she roomed with and alternated with was a organic male. Her story attracted monumental media consideration throughout an election season information cycle and has prompted a federal investigation into the college.

“It was completely surreal,” Slusser stated of Tuesday’s occasion, and he or she is eagerly awaiting the case’s decision, including that “not understanding what is going on to occur and never getting a solution but” is tough for her.

Stephanie Turner

Stephanie Turner, an American fencer who refused to compete towards a transgender athlete in highschool, speaks exterior the U.S. Supreme Courtroom as justices hear arguments within the combat towards the state’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’s sports activities on January 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Oliver Contreras/AFP)

Turner, a aggressive girls’s fencer, turned an in a single day sensation within the Save Ladies’s Sports activities motion when photographs of her kneeling to protest a transgender opponent throughout a match final spring went viral. She was disqualified by USA Fencing for refusing to face the opponent and has not competed in USA Fencing since.

“Let me say that I used to be a bit of disenchanted that there weren’t very sturdy positions from the Supreme Courtroom justices on language, and so they capitulated to new age phrases like cisgender.”

Payton McNabb

Payton McNabb was critically injured after being hit within the head and neck by a spike from a transgender-identifying man from the opposing volleyball workforce. (Courtesy of IW Options and Payton McNabb)

McNabb suffered everlasting mind harm when she was hit within the head with a volleyball by a trans athlete throughout a highschool match in North Carolina in 2022. McNabb has since grow to be one of many main activists within the motion and was honored by President Donald Trump’s 2025 joint tackle to Congress.

“There was a time not so way back when many ladies have been afraid to talk out about this difficulty. It was extremely highly effective to now see that it’s being taken critically on the highest ranges and that individuals are now not afraid to face up for girls and women. It jogged my memory of how far this motion has come and why it’s so necessary to talk out.”

“The toughest half was realizing that we’ve sitting Supreme Courtroom justices who can not outline what a girl is. To me, that takes away credibility. How can anybody sit on the very best court docket within the land and never perceive fundamental organic actuality? The truth that defining ‘girl’ has even reached the Supreme Courtroom, and we do not know the way it will prove, is astonishing and pathetic.”

Kaitlynn Wheeler

Wheeler is a former College of Kentucky swimmer who confronted off towards transgender UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas on the 2022 NCAA Championships.

“What struck me most was how little anybody talked in regards to the impression of the ladies. Throughout the oral arguments, it was continuous about males and boys, their emotions, their experiences, their entry and the ladies for whom Title IX was actually written have been mainly an afterthought. And that bothers me.

“Then there may be the push to scale back girls to a circulating testosterone threshold, as if that’s all we’re. As if femininity might be decreased to a laboratory outcome. That’s insulting. Ladies aren’t a hormone degree. We’re complicated. We’re completely different, and that’s the reason we deserve safety, not despite it.”

Macy Klein

Petty, a former girls’s volleyball participant at Lee College who confronted a transgender opponent throughout her school profession, is now a legislative strategist for the Involved Ladies of America.

“Yesterday’s occasions proved that the motion to guard and advance alternatives for girls in sports activities isn’t just a flash response to insanity, we’ve dedicated ourselves as a legacy. One in all my best insights was seeing the historical past we’ve constructed and proceed to construct.

“Among the athletes concerned have been at this for nearly a decade, and lots of the thought leaders lengthy earlier than that. But the coalition continues to develop with new athletes rising day by day.”

Sophia Lorey

Lorey, a former girls’s soccer participant at Vaguard College, at the moment serves as outreach director for the California Household Council and has been on the entrance traces of highlighting the difficulty of trans athletes in women’ sports activities in California — the nation’s largest hotbed of incidents.

“I used to be disenchanted that the listening to targeted a lot on the wishes of males fairly than on the rights and security of girls and women, the very individuals this debate is meant to guard. Choose Alito stood out by grounding the dialogue in actuality and asking essentially the most basic query: what’s a person and what’s a girl?”

“When the ACLU lawyer admitted that she could not even outline what a person or a girl is, it turned clear how indifferent this complete argument has grow to be from actuality. Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson’s reference to intercourse being ‘assigned at start’ was particularly troubling.

“Whereas some justices appeared keen to concede girls’s rights by language and abstraction, resembling when Justice Amy Coney Barrett adopted phrases like ‘trans women,’ I consider that science, Title IX, and the Structure are on the aspect of girls and women, and that the reality will finally prevail.”

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Kaylie Ray

Ray is a former girls’s volleyball participant at Utah State and was a part of the workforce that forfeited to San Jose State in 2024 to keep away from confrontation with Slusser’s transgender teammate.

“I feel it is unlucky that among the liberal-leaning judges have been very ideological of their questions, virtually as in the event that they have been searching for rationalizations and justifications to permit this injustice to proceed. I do not assume this ought to be a difficulty of left or proper, this is a matter of girls.”

“And the reality is straightforward: males don’t have any place in girls’s sports activities or areas. Additionally it is disheartening to know that we’ve a sitting decide who doesn’t know or can not outline what a girl is. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful that the court docket will rule in favor of upholding the bans.”

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