Female athletes and women’s sports advocates descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday to tell lawmakers how policies allowing biological males to compete in female athletics have affected their safety, privacy and athletic opportunities, while warning that the issue could follow candidates into the midterm elections.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled, “Standing Up for Women in Sports: Ensuring Opportunity, Fairness and Safety for Female Athletes.”
The committee heard testimony from three witnesses: Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) co-founder Kim Jones; Carly Smolak, a former professional soccer player and Australian rules football player; and attorney William Bock III, who previously served as general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
Democrats did not invite a witness of their own. Ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., were the only Democrats who attended, and both left within the first hour. Durbin declined to question the witnesses.
Jones, whose daughter competed against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, told OutKick in an exclusive interview that the Democrats’ absence made the athletes and advocates feel dismissed.
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“It felt dismissive of women, of our concerns, of the right for young girls to expect to be treated fairly in the United States,” Jones said. “For Democrats to say that we’re — I believe, you know, are my neighbors and friends — to actively say we’re not going to concern ourselves about what young girls and even all the way up through older women have been put through.
“I mean, it’s misogynistic, and it is incredibly disappointing. I really hope that they change course and decide that the voices of women who have been hurt and shamed are important enough to listen to.”
Durbin used his opening remarks to argue that the hearing was ignoring other issues facing children and female athletes, including affordability, artificial intelligence, children’s cellphone use and declining trust in government. He also raised concerns that efforts to enforce sex-based sports categories could result in female athletes undergoing invasive inspections.
Jones rejected both arguments.
“It was incensing,” she said of Durbin’s remarks. “One of the worst comments you can give to women who are trying to share the stories of what they’ve been put through by the denial of their sex and the denial of their rights is to suggest that this is not an important issue and that it’s dismissible.
“It’s akin to saying, ‘I cannot care about brain cancer until you solve stomach cancer.’ It’s whataboutism in the most obvious form and telling women that we are not going to address the problems that you’re facing, including sexual abuse and harassment by the inclusion of male athletes in women’s sports and women’s locker rooms, until we solve every other problem in the world.”
Jones said sex eligibility could be determined without invasive examinations, pointing to cheek-swab testing for the SRY gene.
“There is no need for any kind of invasive inspections. There’s no need for any kind of traumatic experience,” Jones said.
Asked whether she expects the issue to influence the midterms, Jones said the protection of female sports should be “non-negotiable.”
“Of course,” Jones said. “I think truth is always an important issue for anyone voting in the general public. I think that standing up for the rights and fair treatment of women in the United States is a ground-zero, non-negotiable issue. And this is a blatant public display of stripping that from women and girls.”
Smolak testified about discovering that a registered sex offender had joined an adult women’s Australian rules football team with which she remained closely connected after retiring. She said the individual was quietly removed after she raised the issue, but alleged that team members were not informed and the sport’s national governing body did not take sufficient action to prevent a similar situation.
“So it felt like at every single level, the national level and largely the media level, it feels like nobody was doing anything about this issue,” Smolak told OutKick exclusively. “And I didn’t want to see this happen again. If it happened once, it’ll happen again if we don’t put policies in place. And the obvious policy is that women’s sports are for biological females, are for women.”
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Smolak said the response she encountered after raising concerns was “incredibly disheartening.”
“I’ve had people be more concerned about using his preferred pronouns than trying to prevent this from happening again or being even upset that it happened in the first place,” she said.
Smolak said she was not surprised Democratic senators did not remain to hear the full testimony.
“I think they either know they have a losing issue or cannot make their argument based on the merits of their position,” Smolak said. “And so they would rather distract about other issues that are unrelated or just not show up at all. But it’s infuriating.”
Following the hearing, additional female athletes spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference.
Briley Lechner, a 17-year-old varsity volleyball and soccer player at Monroe High School in New York, said she and her teammates learned only after a volleyball match that a biological male had competed against them and entered their locker room.
“All of us girls do our normal things. We get undressed, unconsciously trusting our friends next to us. We have girl conversations. We take girl pictures, videos and everything like that,” Lechner said. “So to be told days after that there was a boy in the locker room where we get undressed, and there was a boy on the other side of the court, just is very hurtful. And it feels as if our protection was just stripped away from us and they don’t care.”
Lechner said the backlash she and her father received after speaking publicly would not silence her.
“I’m not going to sit down until there is a change,” she said. “And I’m going to continue to speak my word and share my story until us girls don’t have to feel uncomfortable and we don’t have to be fearful — not only in the locker room, but in the bathroom, on the court, on the field and any other sport.”
Former West Virginia State University soccer player Lainey Armistead discussed her involvement in litigation over West Virginia’s law restricting girls’ and women’s sports to biological females. The Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s law earlier this year.
“There are still girls in 23 other states, girls in New York, girls in California, who do not have the same opportunities that I did,” Armistead said. “And we will not quit fighting for those girls. Women’s sports is not men’s for the taking.”
NCAA softball player Kendall Kotzmacher said her high school team lost in a state semifinal to a team with a transgender pitcher during her senior year.
“Showing up to the field that day knowing that we were playing a man is a feeling that you can’t explain to another person,” Kotzmacher said. “Showing up, seeing a male on the field for something you’ve worked your whole life for, and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it is unimaginable.”
Kotzmacher directly addressed Democrats who have minimized the prevalence of such cases.
“To the Democrats that said this is a non-issue, they’re the reason that I’m going to keep speaking out and everyone else is going to keep speaking out,” she said. “We have multiple women here that have suffered the same things that I have. And there are so many more that have stayed silent because people out there have told them not to speak up, who have scared them into not speaking up.”
U.S. Masters swimmer Angie Griffin said she lost a national title to a transgender competitor at the 2025 U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championship. Griffin said a grievance alleging unsportsmanlike conduct was filed against her after she and other swimmers protested the results, exposing her to a potential lifetime ban before she was cleared.
“The process itself was the punishment,” Griffin said. “The message to other women was clear: Speak up and you will pay a price.”
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“Women should not have to lose a championship, risk a ban, hire a lawyer or face public pressure simply to ask for a fair race,” she added. “The path forward is clear: Prioritize women in women’s sports.”
Marshi Smith, a former NCAA champion swimmer and fellow ICONS co-founder, said the athletes’ accounts showed why adults in leadership positions needed to intervene.
“It was a historic moment to see this issue come to such a huge platform, but it was also incredibly distressing to see that the Democrat senators were so dismissive of young women who are suffering across the country today,” Smith said. “There are huge threats to women’s sports today, and adults really need to stand up in leadership positions and do something about it.”
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OutKick contacted all 10 Democratic committee members about their absences. Only Durbin’s office responded, pointing to his opening statement. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., later told OutKick that he missed the hearing because of a classified briefing on the Iran war, but declined to discuss his position on women’s sports.
Smolak told OutKick that the lack of participation was “not a surprise.”
“I think they either know they have a losing issue or cannot make their argument based on the merits of their position,” Smolak said. “And so they would rather distract about other issues that are unrelated or just not show up at all. But it’s infuriating.”
Kotzmacher said the absence and dismissal of the issue only strengthened her resolve.
“To the Democrats that said this is a non-issue, they’re the reason that I’m going to keep speaking out and everyone else is going to keep speaking out,” she said. “So to the Democrats, we’re going to keep speaking up. We’re going to keep fighting for women, and we’re not going to stop.”
