Behind the Right’s Attacks on Trans Girls in Sports
Conservative media, legal, political, and business leaders came together in a breathtaking assault on human rights.
by Billie Jean Sweeney
In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump seized on a fantastical claim he knew would play well with his right-wing base and exploit a bias he’d found fertile: a collegiate volleyball player who is trans could spike the ball so hard, 80 mph, that she was a danger to other competitors.
The incredible assertion, which had reverberated thoughout right-wing media and found its way into two court filings, was unsupported by evidence. ESPN, which analyzed video from five matches, found the player’s spikes to average 50.6 mph. Lawyers responsible for the filings eventually removed the references.
This unsubstantiated but widely spread claim was but one product of the close coordination among right-wing political, media, business, and legal forces that seek to leverage attacks on trans people in sports into broader anti-trans discrimination and, ultimately, conservative domination over every aspect of American public life.
The legal plank of this coordination can be seen in three major federal lawsuits challenging the inclusion of trans people in collegiate sports. The plaintiffs, who claim constitutional and Title IX violations, share a lawyer, Bill Bock, a Trump loyalist from Indiana. The lawsuits are financially “backed” by an influential anti-trans group now known as the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, a nonprofit that has lobbied the NCAA for sports bans since 2022.
ICONS in turn has worked with the business arm of the conservative project, a for-profit athletic gear company, XX-XY Athletics, whose founder promotes what she calls an “anti-woke” agenda and markets explicitly anti-trans merchandise. The company’s website provides a link to a donation portal to ICONS and, according to its website, a portion of all sales goes to its “XX-XY Athletics Fund.”
The “athletics fund,” though not listed by the IRS as a tax-exempt organization, solicits “tax free donations of $1,000 or more” on its website. According to its website, the proceeds are directed to collegiate athletes through “courage awards” recognizing “everything XX-XY Athletics stands for.” And what is that? A form of anti-trans activism based on the belief that “women’s sports has been under assault by woke political ideology.”
Blending the legal and media arms of this effort is Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who parlayed a fifth-place tie with a trans athlete into a career as an activist and Fox personality. Gaines is also the lead plaintiff in the first of the ICONS lawsuits.
Prominently featured on XX-XY’s website, where she is called an “ambassador,” Gaines has visited other schools involved in the lawsuits, hosted anti-trans podcasts on Fox’s OutKick and Fox Nation, and been an enthusiastic fund raiser and supporter for right-wing institutions whose missions embrace Christian conservative dominance in American society.
Though much mainstream media coverage has sanded the sharp political edges off the effort, its lawyer, Bock, is unambiguously partisan. He helped lead Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and has defended the president’s attacks on the independence of law firms.
THE MECHANISMS OF DISCRIMINATION
The political-legal-media collaboration that produced these lawsuits is instructive. It’s this structure that is providing a foundation for long-term attacks intended to codify discrimination and drive trans people out of public life.
“They’ve hit the trifecta,” said Anna Posbergh, an assistant professor in sport management with Florida State University, who said she was struck by how the anti-trans movement’s tactics emulate those used by abortion foes to topple Roe v Wade.
“I've seen them setting the terms of the debate by the use of certain words like protection,” she said. “I agree we should protect women, but trans people aren’t why we need to protect women.”
“To reduce this issue to something that everyone should agree on, is an incredibly smart, if sinister and discursive trick. They also find the right people, people who look the part, to attract to their cause. It's not necessarily a huge bloc that you need. It's just the right people.”
As a result, Posbergh said, “They've been very effective at spreading misinformation and reducing the complexity of the human experience. The relationship between media and policy and law is incredibly important. Because yes, courts will rule certain ways. But it's public opinion that influences both the decisions that are made, but also whether and how those rules are followed.”
The right-wing’s media, politics and legal muscles, which had often worked in concert since the late 2010s, began to nationalize their push to ban trans women from sports in early 2024.
Bock, the lawyer, made a big splash on Feb. 13, 2024, telling the right-wing Washington Examiner he was resigning an advisory role with the NCAA in protest of policies that allowed trans athletes, then appearing in an ICONS video to endorse its political positions.
One month later, Gaines filed her lawsuit against the NCAA with Bock as lead attorney.
That, in turn, was followed just 11 days later by another “announcement” that drew wide attention in both right-wing and mainstream media: Jennifer Sey, a former Levi’s executive already known for opposing school closings during the pandemic, announced she was creating an athletics brand devoted to anti-trans messaging.
By fall 2024, Sey was giving speeches to Moms for Liberty, a group whose primary agenda is to elect far-right figures to local school boards, and making appearances on the Liberty University-affiliated Standing for Freedom Center.
Sey and Bock have also both been featured in videos published by the Truth & Liberty Coalition. The hard-line conservative organization founded by the TV evangelist Andrew Wommack seeks dominion in all major aspects of societal life – or what its website calls “the reformation of nations through the seven mountains of cultural influence.”
WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?
For all this legal and media muscle, not a lot of money has been publicly disclosed. ICONS, which states on its website that it has financially “backed” all three lawsuits, was granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 2023 although its advocacy activities began a year earlier. It solicits donations on its website, reporting revenue of $454,000 and expenses of $257,000 in its most recent Form 990 tax filing, submitted in April 2025 and covering the 2023 tax year. Its filing discloses no contributors by name.
The IRS places some restrictions on the activities of 501(c)(3) groups. “In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).”
ICONS did not respond to inquiries from Assigned Media seeking information about its contributors and seeking to clarify whether it is funding the lawsuits directly and in full.
Over at XX-XY, potential donors to its “Athletics Fund” are asked to provide personal information before they can proceed. Its website says the fund aims to reward athletes who have adopted its anti-”woke” positions, but the precise funding mechanisms are unclear. Its website states that “Donations will be made exclusively to qualified 501c3s standing up for women’s sports” although it provides no other details. The Athletics Fund is not itself listed by the IRS as a tax-exempt organization.
XX-XY did not respond to inquiries from Assigned Media seeking clarification of its solicitation, further information about its funding and distribution mechanisms, and whether it plans to seek tax-exempt status for its Athletics Fund.
College athletes are entitled to payment for use of their name, image or likeness, with the rules set by a combination of state laws and institutional policies. Public disclosure of these so-called NIL deals is often not required, or is inconsistently monitored and enforced.
XX-XY Athletics identifies Brooke Slusser, a San Jose State volleyball player, as one of the athletes in its “GXME CHXNGERs” program, which it describes as “the first-ever NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) program for student athletes speaking up for women’s sports.” XX-XY also identifies two other Mountain West players as participants in its NIL program.
Slusser, a teammate of the trans player at San Jose State, joined Gaines’s lawsuit against the NCAA as a co-plaintiff in October 2024. It was Slusser’s unsubstantiated claim about the 80 mph spike that rebounded in right-wing circles and made its way onto the presidential campaign trail. Slusser soon began appearing on right-wing shows hosted by Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham. Her team, which started the season 9-0, began to slide as her political activism rose.
THE COST TO TRANS ATHLETES
Neglected in most coverage of the debate over trans athletes is the human cost to the individual trans athletes chosen by the right as scapegoats. At San Jose State, that cost fell on Blaire Fleming, who broke her silence after being subjected to a stream of hateful and threatening messages that she described as the “darkest time in my life”
Against this backdrop, the interwoven connections between right wing media, politics and law – documented in detail by the San Francisco Chronicle and ESPN at the time – continued to play out.
ICONS began directly lobbying the Mountain West Conference and its schools, pushing them to forfeit matches in an effort to drive the trans player out of competition. It championed Slusser in social media posts that made a point of misgendering the trans player and outing her.
By Nov. 13, Bock filed yet another lawsuit, this one against the Mountain West and the NCAA on behalf of Slusser. As it has done with Gaines, XX-XY prominently features Slusser on its site, along with a Mountain West competitor, Aleah Sia Liilii, who joined Slusser’s lawsuit as a co-plaintiff.
In an email response to Assigned Media’s queries, Bock acknowledged amending the lawsuits in March to remove the 80 mph references, but said he had submitted new “expert evidence” saying the trans player’s spikes fall into a men’s range.
On February 4, days after President Trump issued the first of his sweeping anti-trans executive orders, Bock filed a third lawsuit, this one against the Ivy League, Penn and the NCAA for not barring the trans swimmer Lia Thomas from competing, though her inclusion broke no NCAA rules. Once again, Gaines was the lead plaintiff.
By Feb 18, Gaines appeared in an ad for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with the baldly biased title of keeping “men” out of women’s sports. She had become the official face and spokesperson for Trump’s anti-trans America.
Gaines said she was “grateful to see President Trump’s quick and decisive action to uphold his campaign promise and protect female athletes.” She later appeared by his side at the White House.
SPORTS AS GATEWAY TO BROADER BIGOTRY
In the eyes of many analysts, sports bans are simply the tip of the spear of the right-wing effort to enact broad discriminatory measures.
“If the driving force behind a sports ban, for example, was safety then we would also be simultaneously seeing legislation focused on things like reducing brain injuries in football players,” said Kye Campbell-Fox, a researcher at Michigan State University and manager of the Trans-ilience Research Lab.
If the intent was promoting equity for women athletes, he added, “we would see bills about equal pay and equal representation on TV for men and women sports.”
Campell-Fox and his colleagues published a study in The Journal of Transgender Health last year examining the tactics and the impact of anti-trans measures, focusing on Texas, where right-wing lawmakers have pushed a torrent of legislation. He testified last month against an anti-trans sports ban in Michigan, a state where Larry Nassar’s decades of abuse of women athletes led to his life imprisonment just a few years ago.
Extreme and invasive sports legislation, researchers like Campbell-Fox said, have been shown to harm cis gender women, especially women of color. “Whiteness is viewed as the norm,” in the perceptions of many who presume to judge what men and women athletes ought to look like. Thus, he said, black women and other cis athletes of color face undue scrutiny and harassment.
There is a historical arc to this bias, which targets intersex athletes as well.
“The attacks on transfem participation in sport seem to have as their basis the notion that if one is not XX female, one may not compete - fairly, lawfully - with other XX females,” said Dana Priesing, a lawyer who has worked for trans rights since the 1990s. “This is a scientifically and culturally ignorant view, given that nature regularly creates persons who fall outside strict XX female definition but who yet appear female, identify as female, and are culturally accepted as female.
“Moreover, and returning to transfemmes specifically, these attacks seem to be without regard to whether a transfemme's physical characteristics (height, weight, strength) fall within the bell curve of XX females overall.”
Priesing drew a parallel with the country’s past.
“The position of those attacking transfem participation in sport is like the one-drop rule. The one drop rule is the racist-hierarchical notion that if a person has even a single drop of African blood in their heritage, they cannot be considered white, or access the rights and privileges which accrue to whiteness. Rather, they are ranked in some category of other-than-whiteness.
“Similarly, with the apparently XX-purity-based hierarchical system of those attacking transfolk, anything other than pure XX chromosomal makeup condemns one to an otherness, such that one's participation in sport becomes unfair.”
THE WAY FORWARD
Despite an explosion of right-wing attention, trans inclusion in school athletics is hardly new. “We've had policies that were relatively uncontroversial for at least the last 15 years,” said Pat Griffin, a retired University of Massachusetts professor who worked with colleagues at the National Center for Lesbian Rights to develop recommendations for the NCAA and high school associations. “They weren't perfect, and this is a complex issue.”
“I think that there are legitimate ways to provide paths for athletes to participate. I think it's different at every level of athletics. I think children should be allowed to play, period. We have to deal with those complexities,” Griffin said. “And there's none of that in this conversation now.”
What changed? Griffin and others trace it to a case that began in 2018 in Connecticut in which the Alliance Defending Freedom seized upon the success of two trans track athletes to begin mounting a broad anti-trans campaign. The hard-right group “advocates for laws denying transgender people’s rights in schools, health care, and workplaces,” the ACLU noted.
“One of the things that has been so harsh to me,” Griffin said of the anti-trans movement’s tactics, “is the complete dehumanization and cruelty that people have exhibited toward transgender people, especially young people, children, high school and college athletes.
“You know, what is it like to be 16-year-old and have people you don't even know attacking you in person at your competition, calling you names from the stands, holding banners, and outing you on social media? What is it like?”
In the face of this powerful right-wing onslaught on human rights, some purported centrists have suggested that Democrats and other critics simply go along. It’s advice that ignores history.
“In this moment right now we're talking about trans athletes but when we look at the history of sport, there are a lot of groups who have been excluded and that didn't turn out well,” said Anna Baeth, co-author of the forthcoming book, “Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports.”
“Whether we're talking about kids, whether we're talking about adults, we know that sports and physical activity does impact our physical well-being, our mental health and our social well-being. So the idea of denying that to any individual is incredibly frightening.”
“Sports have the ability to save lives,” Baeth said. “The question ultimately is, why would we deny anybody that?
Billie Jean Sweeney is a news editor, press freedom advocate, and trans woman.