(LifeSiteNews) — A male golfer who poses as a woman is suing the United States Golf Association (USGA), Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), and others for a 2024 rule change that effectively disqualified him from participating in the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open qualifier.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in 2024 hundreds of female golfers signed a letter calling on the LPGA to remove self-professed “transgender” golfer “Hailey” Davidson, to “repeal all policies and rules that allow male golfers to participate in women’s golf events,” and to “establish and enforce the right of female professional golfers to participate in women’s golf based on sex-eligibility (which) must be limited to members of the female sex.”
The LPGA agreed, subsequently announcing an updated Gender Policy for Competition Eligibility, which was “informed by a working group of top experts in medicine, science, sport physiology, golf performance and gender policy law,” and would take effect starting in 2025, thus disqualifying Davidson. “Players assigned male at birth and who have gone through male puberty are not eligible to compete in the aforementioned events,” the organization confirmed.
Now, the Associated Press reports that Davidson is suing for damages against the named governing bodies, the golf club that hosted the qualifier, and three LPGA officials. The suit alleges that state laws banning prepubescents from taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones effectively deny “trans women” in those states any path to complying under the new policy.
The LPGA acknowledged the lawsuit in a press statement, announcing that it will simply “let that process play out on the proper forum.” The group added that its “gender policy was developed through a thoughtful, expert-informed process and is grounded in protecting the competitive integrity of elite women’s golf.”
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rationale for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
Critics also argue that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, which found that more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
In America since the 1980s, more than 1,941 gold medals in female events that would have gone to female athletes have instead been claimed by men identifying as “trans women,” and along with them more than $493,173 in prize money across more than 10,067 amateur and professional events, according to data compiled by He Cheated and reviewed by Concerned Women for America.
Regarding golf, the players who initially urged the LGPA to change its policy argued at the time that the “male advantage in driving the ball is estimated around a 30% performance advantage; this is an enormous difference in the context of sport. Anatomical differences between males and females affect clubhead speed and regulating consistency at ball contact. Females have higher mean heart rates and encounter greater physiological demands while playing, especially at high altitudes. The anatomical differences are not removed with male testosterone suppression.”
