Texas judge rejects temporary injunction seeking gender testing in NCAA women's sports

USA Today

19-03-2025

Texas judge rejects temporary injunction seeking gender testing in NCAA women's sports
LUBBOCK, Texas − A Lubbock district judge on Tuesday denied a request for temporary injunction that would require the NCAA to impose genetic testing on athletes to determine their sex or have the organization and its affiliates remove the word "women" from women's competition.
In the State of Texas v. the NCAA, filed in December in Lubbock County, state attorney general Ken Paxton says the NCAA has been "engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by marketing sporting events as 'women's' competitions, only to then provide consumers with mixed sex competitions where biological males compete against biological females."
The suit sought an injunction prohibiting the NCAA from "allowing biological males to compete in women's sporting events in Texas or involving Texas teams, or alternatively requiring the NCAA to stop marketing events as 'women's' when in fact they are mixed sex competitions."
In December, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel that about 510,000 athletes compete in the NCAA and he knows of fewer than 10 who are transgender.
Judge Les Hatch denied the injunction in Lubbock's 237th District Court.
"I'm not commenting about the NCAA policy, whether it was right or wrong at that time," Hatch told the plaintiffs' counsel, "but you've asked me to order SRY gene testing or remove the word 'women,' but I don't think we're there yet. I don't think SRY testing is going to accomplish with 100% certainty what you want it to. Or at least I didn't hear that it does."
President Donald Trump, on Feb. 5, signed an executive order designed to keep transgender athletes out of women's sports.
Hatch made his ruling at the end of seven hours in the courtroom. Most of the proceedings centered on testimony from women who are recent former NCAA athletes who said they'd been adversely affected by having to compete — in one case, unknowingly — with or against a transgender athlete.
Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines testified by Zoom from Wisconsin. Testifying in the courtroom were former San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser, her mother, Kim Slusser, former North Carolina State swimmer Kylee Alons and former Kentucky swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler.
Hatch said he'd anticipated hearing a lot about SRY gene testing and that he expected it to be "a science hearing as much as anything."
"I do know the executive order does not set out what type of testing President Trump wants in his order," Hatch said. "Instead, he has ordered various people, agencies, to confer to figure out what is a proper methodology to determine male and female — because even the SRY gene, which was abandoned by the Olympics in 1996, because they tested 3,400 women, found eight to have the SRY gene, but then later, upon further investigation, found them to be more female than male due to androgen insensitivity."
He went on to say, "Before I started delving into this lawsuit, I figured there was a test out there that was black and white, that was 100%, but I think if that were the case, that would have been included in the executive order. It's just not there."
The NCAA issued an updated policy on transgender athlete participation on Feb. 6, the day after the Trump executive order. Attorney Tom Riney, part of the defense team, pointed out that some of the women who testified as supporting witnesses for the state, had initially praised the NCAA policy change. The women who had done so said on the stand, however, they didn't immediately grasp the nuances and changed their opinion after reviewing it more carefully.
The Independent Council on Women's Sports (ICONS), in a statement sent to media, says the new NCAA policy is "even more permissive than before.' It noted the NCAA has removed itself from eligibility monitoring, leaving it to schools.
Swimmers, volleyball player Brooke Slusser testify
Gaines, Wheeler and Alons told the court they felt angered and violated having to compete at NCAA swim meets against Lia Thomas, who is transgender.
Alons said she felt "on edge," "uncomfortable" and "vulnerable" sharing a locker room with Thomas and used a dirty, dimly lit storage closet to change into her competition swimsuit.
Brooke Slusser said her senior season at San Jose State was disrupted by the presence of a transgender teammate.
"Especially with the fact that I found out after sharing a locker room and a hotel room and an apartment with this person, I think it affected me a lot," Slusser said. "I felt betrayed."
The hearing and Hatch's ruling came as March Madness, the NCAA Tournament for Division I basketball, was starting. The NCAA Tournament for Division II and Division III are already three rounds deep.
In his opening statement, Riney said the state's complaint made references to NCAA policy being problematic for "over a decade."
"So for over a decade this has been going on," Riney said, "they filed a suit in December of 2024, and here we are after some of the (NCAA) tournaments have already started and it's somehow an emergency that they say demands injunctive relief."
Riney circled back in his closing argument to the disruption an injunction would cause.
"The tournaments have already started," he said. "How is this court going to implement that testing immediately? They've given you no evidence of what that test would require, who would be required to perform it, whether or not it's reliable, whether or not people could cheat on that. They're just asking basically to disrupt the tournament."
Further, Riney said, an injunction requiring references to women be removed presumed late changes would be needed to tournament tickets, logos and merchandise.