Why The NCAA Can’t Be Trusted To Protect Women’s Sports And What The Senate Can Do About It

A little over a month ago, I stood on the steps of the Supreme Court as it announced its decisions in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox. After nearly seven years of advocacy on this issue, it was gratifying to hear the highest court in the land affirm concerns that had been dismissed for years. The ruling finally gave states the clarity they had been fighting for and released protections for female athletes from the holding cells of courtrooms, including in my home state of Arizona.

That clarity is too hard-won to treat carelessly.

For years, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) and female athletes like me fought to establish what should have been obvious from the beginning: women deserve athletic opportunities that are fair, safe, and meaningful. Since Idaho passed the first Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020, 26 other states have now acted to protect women’s sports.

The road to 27 was long, unpopular, and then suddenly obvious.

When CWALAC first began lobbying for women’s-only sports laws, we were vilified as “alarmist.” Few people took our concerns seriously. But momentum grew quickly after Idaho State Rep. Barbara Ehardt passed the first-of-its-kind legislation, and the Lia Thomas/NCAA scandal forced the issue into the national conversation.

If one institution should have learned this lesson by now, it is the NCAA. The organization entrusted with governing collegiate athletics repeatedly failed to protect female athletes when it mattered most. Its record should make all of us skeptical that we can simply trust sports institutions to get this right on their own.

That is why the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) deserves serious scrutiny.

PCSA is the U.S. Senate’s attempt to standardize Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rules across the country. I understand its importance; student-athletes deserve clear and predictable rules. But clarity in this area could come at the expense of clarity in another.

Some of the strongest warnings about PCSA’s preemption are coming from the people on the front lines defending Fairness in Women’s Sports laws. The attorneys general from Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, and Alaska wrote to the Senate saying their recent victory at the Supreme Court that upheld women’s sports protections “might now be undone by the preemption provisions contained in S. 4668” and PCSA provisions are “unacceptably unclear and risk re-opening the floodgates of litigation.” Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal organization that has defended female athletes in court, agreed with these concerns and offered a “small edit” to the bill’s text that amounted to 15 total characters. ADF said these edits “would tighten the language against efforts by activist judges to misinterpret the bill’s intent: addressing issues in college sports without preempting state laws that keep men out of women’s sports.”

After seven years of litigation, injunctions, and uncertainty for female athletes, we should not be debating whether Congress can spare 15 characters to make its intent unmistakable. If the authors truly believe it wouldn’t affect women’s protections, then clarifying that should not change anything.

The years of inevitable injunctions against women’s sports protections could be disastrous for female athletics. For every one man who competes in women’s sports, hundreds of female athletes are robbed of fair and safe competition.

This is also why I am wary of simply trusting the NCAA or any other governing body to resolve these questions later. The NCAA had years to demonstrate leadership in protecting female athletes. Instead, female athletes were pushed to the sidelines, silenced, and expected to accept the discriminatory practices of the NCAA.

As a female athlete who played against a man during my recruiting process to play college volleyball, I understand this all too well. That’s why I’ve testified in support of women’s sports laws from South Carolina and New Hampshire to Colorado and beyond. I understand the importance of NIL. I understand the need for a cohesive framework to sustain these incredible opportunities. But we cannot rush it at the expense of other pressing issues facing sports governance.

I strongly urge the Senate to reconcile what is at stake. I am not asking Congress to choose between NIL regulation and female athletes. I am asking Congress to get both right. A clear path forward to protect female athletes was too hard-won to jeopardize haphazardly.

Do not make female athletes pay the price for getting NIL right.

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Macy Petty Charles, a former NCAA volleyball player, is legislative strategist for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles in public policy. On X: @CWforA