The Protect College Sports Act Could Undercut Wins for Women’s Sports

A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate, the Protect College Sports Act, is intended to set new national rules for college athletics, taking on name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, player transfers, and much more. While these are certainly worthwhile goals, vague language could unintentionally undermine the recent gains that have been made protecting women’s sports, including laws now on the books in 27 states.

Those laws did not appear out of nowhere. They were a response to men competing on women’s and girls’ teams, to titles and opportunities lost, to female athletes who asked their states to act. The states did act, and the protections they built were affirmed just weeks ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was hard-won ground, and this bill jeopardizes it.

To be clear, ADF is not opposing the bill as a whole or the goals it is trying to achieve. And there is no reason to doubt that the bill’s sponsors want to protect college athletics. The concern we have is narrow and technical: left unclarified, the bill risks undoing the very protections the President’s executive order and the Supreme Court just secured. Addressing this issue now will help ensure those wins are safeguarded in the long term.

The Hidden Problem in the Protect College Sports Act

To set national standards around college sports, the bill creates general rules for who is eligible to compete, while limiting a state’s authority to set eligibility rules of its own.

That part of the bill is poorly worded, and this is where the danger lies.

Women’s sports laws provide that men are not eligible for women’s teams. So a bill that preempts state eligibility rules could be read—by a future administration or an activist court—to undermine the very laws that protect women’s sports. Nothing in the bill says that is the intent. But courts enforce the text Congress enacts, not the intentions behind it, and ambiguous text invites exactly this kind of argument.

ADF has raised these concerns with Congress for weeks and has offered a concrete way to resolve them. So far, no satisfactory solution has emerged.

Why the Timing Makes This Urgent

We speak not as an uninformed bystander but as an organization that has been litigating women’s sports cases for nearly a decade.

Recently, on June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s and West Virginia’s women’s sports laws, confirming that states may keep women’s sports teams for women. Alongside Attorneys General Raúl Labrador and JB McCuskey representing Idaho and West Virginia, we represented three female athletes in defending their states’ laws.

But that victory came only after years of losses. In West Virginia, a single male athlete displaced more than 470 girls over 1,400 times and took a state championship—even threatening another ADF client with sexual assault in a locker room. Those cases, together with President Trump’s executive order directing the government to keep men out of women’s sports, are key parts of the protections now in place.

Those protections were hard to win but are already having a huge impact. Passing federal legislation that could jeopardize them would put that progress at risk just when we’re gaining momentum.

A reform meant to stabilize college sports should not become the instrument that once again destabilizes women’s sports in the 27 states that protect it.

One Change Closes the Gap

The fix does not require altering the bill’s core purpose or a heavy rewrite. Congress can regulate college athlete compensation and transfer rules while stating plainly that the law does not preempt state women’s sports laws. Those goals are compatible; the only thing missing is precise language.

As ADF CEO, President, and Chief Counsel Kristen Waggoner put it in a statement on the bill, “There is a simple fix available: Ensure the preemption of state laws is narrow.” The point is not to stop the legislation. It is to keep a well-intended reform from becoming the tool that undoes a decade of gains for women and girls.

Every senator who cares about equal opportunity for women should insist on that clarification before the bill moves forward. The stakes are too high, and the fix too easy, to leave to chance.