Colorado legislators have put our state’s anti-discrimination law on a collision course with Title IX, the federal law that guarantees women and girls an equal opportunity to compete in sports, and female student athletes are paying the consequences.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that Jefferson County Public Schools is violating Title IX by allowing male students access to female intimate spaces.
The department found that in the district. Jeffco’s response is that changing its policy would put the district in direct conflict with Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. Courts will decide whether that is an adequate defense. But the implicit argument, that Colorado law effectively compels Jeffco to violate Title IX, is a major, predictable indictment of our legislature.
And this is just the latest shoe to drop. Last year, several Colorado school districts with policies that protect girls’ sports decided to pre-emptively sue the Colorado Civil Rights Division over their policies’ conflict with Colorado law.
In 2023, we saw this problem coming and tried to fix it. , “Women’s Rights in Athletics,” which would have handled this issue compassionately and clearly, without leaving financially strapped school districts to navigate a conflict between state and federal law. The bill would have protected girls’ right to safe, fair competition, while allowing for a coeducational category as an appropriate avenue for transgender participation. It was defeated on a straight party-line vote, and our highly ideological legislature kept the gap between Title IX and Colorado law unresolved.
What is at stake here is not merely a clash of competing worldviews but a question of women’s safety and their right to compete on a level playing field.
Senator Lisa Frizell grew up in an era when women did not have the same rights as men to compete in high school or collegiate athletics. Women fought for their own category, and the reason they had to stems from a fundamental understanding of biological reality: male and female athletes are not the same. Whether measured in testosterone levels, bone density, lung capacity, or muscle mass, biological males carry inherent physical advantages over women. If that were not true, every sport could simply be coeducational. The very existence of a women’s category is an acknowledgment of that difference.
Colorado law, as currently written and enforced, effectively denies that difference.
Senator Byron Pelton’s daughter competes in high school volleyball and basketball. As it stands, Colorado law offers his daughter no guarantee that the protections Title IX was designed to provide will be honored.
And yet, when HB 1098 was introduced in 2023, critics dismissed it as a solution in search of a problem. Today, with the Office for Civil Rights documenting 61 students on opposite-sex sports rosters in a single district, the problem no longer looks theoretical.
The legislature got it wrong in 2023. But the people of Colorado will have the chance to reverse course this November. Thanks to the efforts of will appear on the ballot. This initiative would require school-sponsored athletic teams to be designated as male, female, or coeducational, and ensure that teams designated for girls are protected as such.
Wisdom, compassion, and thoughtful policy are necessary over the question of transgenderism more generally. But while we remain culturally divided over the implications of that worldview, we must not put the safety of our girls in the crosshairs. Fairness requires honesty, and the honest truth is that women’s sports exist for a reason. Itap time for Colorado law to prioritize women’s safety over ideological capture.
Sen. Lisa Frizell represents Colorado state Senate District 2 in Douglas County and Sen. Byron Pelton represents Colorado state Senate District 1 in Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld, and Yuma counties.
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