For more than fifty years, Title IX has stood as a bedrock promise to every girl and woman in America: you will get an equal shot. Signed into law in 1972, the statute guaranteed that institutions receiving federal dollars could not discriminate on the basis of sex. It revolutionized women’s athletics. Generations of daughters and granddaughters have built their competitive dreams on that foundation – and rightfully so.

But a promise is only as durable as the judges willing to uphold it. The Trump administration has taken decisive steps to restore common sense to women’s sports, including pressuring the NCAA to finally bar biological males from women’s competition. Yet the federal judiciary remains stocked with ideological remnants of the Biden era, and last week one of them reminded us just how much damage a single activist in a black robe can still do.

From The Post Millennial:

A federal judge ruled against former college swimmer and women’s rights activist Riley Gaines in her suit against the NCAA, determining that Gaines could not bring her suit because the college sports body was not beholden to Title IX. Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Tiffany R. Johnson of the Northern District of Georgia said that there was no evidence that the NCAA was a recipient of federal funding and that as such, they were not required to follow equal rights law set out for educational institutions.

“Here, there is no evidence that the NCAA ever received, or could have received, federal funds,” Johnson said in her ruling. “Thus, Plaintiffs’ Title IX claims cannot proceed.” Johnson looked at direct funding streams. The NCAA, a non-profit, organizes college athletic competitions and makes most of its revenue from March Madness. Were it not for student athletic scholarships provided by universities, most of which receive federal funding including student loan funds, the NCAA would have nothing to organize.

A ruling in search of an excuse

Judge Johnson’s reasoning is breathtaking in its willful blindness. The NCAA doesn’t directly cash a federal check, she concluded, so Title IX simply doesn’t apply. Never mind reality.

Think about what that logic demands you ignore. The NCAA’s entire empire – its billion-dollar March Madness bonanza, its television deals, its corporate sponsorships – exists because federally funded universities supply the athletes, the facilities, and the scholarships. Pull the federal money out of American higher education tomorrow, and the NCAA collapses by Friday.

Gaines’ legal team even presented evidence tying the NCAA to Department of Defense funding through the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium. Johnson brushed it aside, ruling that “affiliation” with a funded research program doesn’t make the NCAA a “recipient.” Convenient distinction.

And this wasn’t her first swing at gutting the case. Before she even reached the funding question, Johnson had already tossed the women’s constitutional and bodily-privacy claims. Every avenue, shut down. Every argument, rejected. You have to ask yourself: would she have hunted this aggressively for technicalities if the plaintiff were a progressive darling suing on behalf of some fashionable cause? If a left-aligned organization had brought this exact case championing gender ideology rather than challenging it, does anyone honestly believe Judge Johnson would have strained to declare the NCAA beyond the reach of civil rights law?

Not a chance.

The women who refuse to go quietly

Riley Gaines is unbothered – and undeterred. “If the NCAA isn’t subject to Title IX, then WHO is?” she fired back on X after the ruling dropped. “Of course, we will appeal. The goal from the beginning was to get this case before the Supreme Court.”

She knows this fight intimately. At the 2022 NCAA Division I Championships, Gaines tied for fifth place with biological male swimmer William “Lia” Thomas in the 200-yard freestyle. When it came time to hand out hardware, an NCAA official informed Gaines her trophy would be mailed. Thomas received his on the spot. Digest that for a moment.

Gaines and the group of female athletes who filed this lawsuit in March 2024 have been vilified at every turn – smeared as transphobes, bigots, you name it – for the radical position that women’s sports should be for women. Their courage helped shift both public opinion and national policy. The courts owe them more than a door slammed on a technicality.

Justice delayed, not denied

The Trump administration has already accomplished prospectively what this lawsuit sought. The NCAA now bars men from women’s competition. Good. But accountability for what these athletes endured still matters. Changing the rules going forward doesn’t erase the harm already done to real women by identifiable institutions.

Gaines and her co-plaintiffs have thirty days to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. “This momentary setback will not deter me or other women athletes in the least,” she said. “We are on the side of truth.”

A Biden-appointed judge found her technicality. But technicalities don’t rewrite biology or undo what happened to these women. The Supreme Court may yet have the final word – and when it does, it would do well to remember exactly who Title IX was written to protect in the first place.

Key Takeaways

• A Biden-appointed judge dismissed Riley Gaines’ Title IX suit against the NCAA on a technicality about funding.
• The NCAA profits entirely from federally funded universities yet claims immunity from federal civil rights law.
• Gaines and fellow female athletes plan to appeal, with the Supreme Court as their ultimate target.
• Policy victories under Trump are welcome, but women harmed by trans athletics policies still deserve legal accountability.

Sources: The Post Millennial