The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has been at the forefront of the legal war against efforts to use the government to force progressive gender ideology on the public. Currently, the organization is fighting back against the Biden administration’s revamping of Title IX rules to redefine the definition of “sex.”

The organization recently filed a motion to stay and a preliminary injunction with a federal district court in the case of State of Tennessee v. Cardona. The legal action was filed on behalf of a high school athlete in West Virginia and Christian Educators Association International. The organization’s attorneys are demanding that the court halt the White House’s effort to reimagine Title IX to include “gender identity.”

This move comes after the organization found that a biological male athlete in West Virginia defeated female competitors over 700 times in track and field events. This story, along with many others, highlights the ongoing debate over gender identity and women’s sports.

ADF Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau noted that the “male athlete has finished ahead of girls more than 700 times in cross country and track-and-field events and taken our client’s spot to compete at a conference championship.”

Rouleau’s comments reflect many of the arguments coming from those who oppose pushing gender ideology in sports. Critics have complained that since males have apparent physical advantages over females, allowing them to compete in these events is unfair.

Last month, a federal appeals court overturned a West Virginia law barring males from competing in female sports.

The “Save Women’s Sports Act” was enacted about three years ago before being overturned on Tuesday by the court. However, state officials vowed to continue fighting for the law.

The ban in West Virginia was originally signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in 2021, and introduced as the “Save Women’s Sports Act.” It required that any official or unofficial school-sanctioned event involving athletics determine each athlete’s participation in the event “based on the athlete’s biological sex as indicated on the athlete’s original birth certificate issued at the time of birth,” effectively barring transgender students from participating.

The ruling from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the law cannot lawfully be applied to a 13-year-old girl who has been taking puberty-blocking medication and publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade.

In February 2023, the court blocked the state’s bid to kick Becky Pepper Jackson off of her middle school track and field team if the law were enforced.

Judge Toby Heytens wrote that offering her a “choice” between not participating in sports and participating only on boys teams “is no real choice at all.”

“The defendants cannot expect that BPJ will countermand her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy,” Heytens wrote.

This decision resulted in another story that made the rounds on the airwaves and interwebs when Becky Pepper-Jackson, a trans-identified male, started competing in middle school girl’s sports. This prompted five female athletes to boycott the event, refusing to compete against him in the shot put event.

The girls were banned from all other sporting events because of their refusal to compete against a male. However, a judge later overruled that decision and reinstated the girls.

Rouleau further criticized the Biden administration’s rule change, saying it will “upend the equal opportunities that women and girls have enjoyed for 50 years under Title IX and will threaten their safety and privacy at every level.”

The ADF’s legal filing lays out several arguments against the Title IX changes, noting that they “irreparably harm intervenors while violating the Constitution, contradicting Title IX, and supplanting state laws protecting privacy, free speech, and fair athletic competitions.”

It also highlighted how the male student who defeated female athletes hundreds of times took her female client’s spot in a track meet “and forced her to leave her locker room to avoid the humiliation of changing in front of a male.”

There have been several other legal challenges to the new rules coming from other organizations and attorneys general of multiple states.