In a vote that was unanimous, the regents who oversee George’s 26 public universities are asking two athletic groups, the NCAA and the NJCAA, to ban transgender women – men – from participating in women’s sports, The Associated Press reported.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican, praised the regents for their vote at the same time the state legislature is tackling the issue, too.
“The work female athletes put into competing should be protected at all cost, no matter the age,” he said. “This action brings us one step closer toward achieving that ultimate goal.”
Kim Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women's Sports, tells AFN she was grateful the Georgia Board of Regents is listening to female athletes who are standing up for their fairness and safety.
“I mean, just from every age and as early as we can measure, there's a difference between girls and boys, and men and women,” says Jones, a former All-American tennis champ at Stanford University.
One example of the current fight is Brooke Slusser, a member of the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State University. Slusser is now suing after she was forced to share a hotel room with a supposedly female teammate named Blair Fleming who is not, in reality, a female.
Describing the team’s traveling arrangements on the Megyn Kelly Show, Slusser said teammates usually get new hotel roommates so they can learn about each other. But she was paired with Fleming, again and again, and was never informed her teammate/roommate is a male.
“I’m a new person on the team,” she said. “I wasn’t going to sit and ask questions, or cause trouble, because I do what I’m told. It is what it is at the time.”
Slusser shared she felt betrayed by the university, and by Fleming, because neither ever acknowledged he was born a male.
In a related post on X, Slusser also praised a rival volleyball team, the Nevada Wolf Pack, after its female players voted to forfeit their game against San Jose State because of Fleming.
"We, the University of Nevada Reno women’s volleyball team, forfeit against San Jose State University and stand united in solidarity with the volleyball teams of Southern Utah University, Boise State University, the University of Wyoming, and Utah State University," the team wrote in an exclusive statement to sports website OutKick.
The reason women’s sports teams exist at all, Jones tells AFN, is because male athletes dominate sports due to basic biology. So an all-female team gives girls and women the opportunity for their own achievements based on their own abilities.
“We never thought we would be having to explain these differences, but here we are,” she says.
Jones co-founded Independent Council, or ICONS, with Marshi Smith, a former swim team captain at the University of Arizona, where she is a member of its Sports Hall of Fame.
