(The Center Square) – Nonprofit status of the billion-dollar NCAA could be next in the crosshairs, says a North Carolina congressman.
The organization generating nearly $1.3 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2023, anchored by March Madness, has been scorched for its policies allowing men to compete in women’s athletics, use women’s locker rooms, and failing to protect women’s spaces in general.
NCAA President Charlie Baker responded to President Donald Trump’s executive order protecting women’s spaces by saying the NCAA would change policy and do so.
That effort has failed, according to leading voices for women.
“Guess if the NCAA is not going to protect women in sports by allowing loopholes, we need to look at their nonprofit status,” U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said on social media to Riley Gaines.
No voice has been louder or clearer than hers. And she tells Fox News Digital the policy “is as clear as mud.”
One example is a statement that no waivers are available, and athletes assigned male at birth “may not compete on a women’s team with amended birth certificates” or other forms of identification.
“But here is the thing – there is no waiver being asked for,” says Jennifer Sey, founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics apparel. “The changed birth certificate is the proof of a person’s sex as required by the NCAA policy but pushed off to the states to verify. And the states provided the changed birth certificate.
“The NCAA is playing language games here. Unless a cheek swab or spit test is used to verify sex, we got no deal.”
Sey talked with The Center Square earlier this month, just prior to President Donald Trump on Feb. 5 signing the Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports executive order.
On network television Wednesday morning, Independent Council on Women’s Sports – also known as ICONS – said “There must be a screening mechanism to ensure that no male athlete can cross that barrier.
“The policy that the NCAA released has no accountability and oversight from the NCAA. It has no clear language limiting women’s team membership to female athletes only and it has no mechanism for screening sex.”
Murphy, on social media earlier this month, said it’s common sense “men are faster and stronger than women, regardless of what is done medically to their hormones. Harm has occurred. It shouldn’t have had to take an EO by @POTUS to force the NCAA to back away from attacking women in sports.”
Only Florida, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Montana prohibit changes to the marking for sex on a birth certificate. Fourteen states allow the change without any medical documentation.
Gaines on Wednesday in an interview on Fox News Digital – not a linear channel; rather, an on-demand viewing of Fox News programs – said the policy loopholes are there for states and schools. For example, there’s no definition of male or female but there is of gender identity, she said.
“And it defines gender identity as both man and woman,” she said. “So, of course, you can see where that’s a problem.”
She criticized the lack of accountability by the NCAA.
Jones was an All-American in singles and doubles tennis at Stanford, and three times an NCAA runnerup. Gaines was a 12-time All-American swimmer at Kentucky.