REP. BENNETT: STATE SUPREME COURT RULING BEGINS DESTRUCTION OF GIRLS SPORTS IN MINNESOTA

On October 22, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that males who consider themselves a different gender have the right to compete on female teams.

This was based on a new Minnesota “public accommodation” discrimination statute that was passed into law in by an all-Democrat led legislature and Governor Walz in 2023.

State Representative Peggy Bennett (R-Albert Lea) said that with this ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court and this commonsense defying statute have essentially eliminated girls’ sports in Minnesota.

“As a senior in high school in 1975, I had the great joy of experiencing the advent of girls’ sports in Minnesota with the enactment of Title IX,” Bennett said. “I got to participate in the very first girls’ only basketball team for my school. We girls were ecstatic! Never in a million years would I have dreamed that, fifty years later, I would witness the destruction of those very same girls’ sports in Minnesota.”

Bennett said allowing biological males with a different sense of gender to compete as females against young women and girls destroys the fundamental concept of what makes athletic competition fair and safe.

“It is a biological fact that males have a distinct and superior physical and biological advantage over females,” Bennett said. “That’s the very reason Title IX created girls’ only sports teams.”

Bennett noted that she and her House Republican colleagues saw this coming and attempted multiple times to clarify this Minnesota statute last session, but House Democrats blocked those efforts every time.

“Today is a sad day for Minnesota girls and women,” Bennett said. “I will continue to fight for these commonsense changes. We must come together in a bipartisan way to protect the future of girls’ sports!”