Sports governing bodies keep trying to have a female category without committing to the objective, sex-based definition of a female. Each successive attempt to delineate a female category without defining female athletes shows the way for activists and mediocre male athletes to self-identify their way into competing against females in nearly every sport and level, from collegiate swimming to adult recreational soccer, from high school volleyball to pro rugby, disc golf, and boxing.
Further away from the public eye, women’s sports face an existential crisis at the hands of a small network of people waging lawfare against biology and fairness on behalf of these activists and mediocre male athletes.
American swimmer William “Lia” Thomas is one of the most well-known males in women’s sports. Having won an NCAA Division I women’s championship in 2022, he now wants to compete in the USA Swimming Olympic Trials in the female category.
Thomas is taking the international swimming federation, World Aquatics, to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn World Aquatics’ policy that bans any male who has “experienced any part of male puberty” from competing in the female category. He is represented by lawyers who are part of a network with over a decade of experience litigating against the sex-based female category in sports.
Leading his legal team is Canadian lawyer Carlos Sayao of the law firm Tyr, LLP. Sayao and another Tyr partner, Jim Bunting, represented Caster Semenya at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2018 and 2019.
