Is it just me, or does it seem like common sense is starting to bloom?
The Missouri House voted to remove the expiration date on its law protecting women’s sports. The bill passed along party lines. Republicans said what most parents already know: If you want fairness in girls’ athletics, you have to protect the category itself. Democrats said the state needs more “study” and more “discussion.”
It’ll be nice to see whether the word “woman” still means something in law.
In 2023, the Missouri General Assembly passed a law that barred biological males from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. It also restricted gender procedures for minors. Senate Democrats filibustered. The compromise included a four-year sunset clause. In other words, the law would expire unless renewed.
Now House Republicans want to remove that ticking clock.
State Rep. Brian Seitz of Branson said the expiration was “a matter of capitulation.” He is right. A sunset clause is what you add when you do not have the votes to stand firm. Making the protections permanent, he argued, ensures female athletes have a level playing field.
That phrase matters: level playing field. It is the entire point of Title IX. Congress passed Title IX in 1972 to guarantee equal opportunities for women in education and athletics. It recognized that biological differences exist and that separate categories are sometimes necessary to protect fairness.
If you erase the category, you erase the protection.
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State Rep. Cathy Jo Loy of Carthage put it plainly. “If we erode sex based protections in athletics…we would collapse the very category that allowed generations of women to compete fairly.” Is that the sound of logic in the air?
Before the 2023 law, decisions were left to groups like the Missouri State High School Activities Association. From 2012 to 2022, 12 transgender athletes tried out for Missouri school sports under policies that allowed participation after a year of hormone suppression.
Democrats are leaning hard on that number. State Rep. Wick Thomas argued that more bills have been filed than the number of transgender athletes in the state. He called it a misuse of time and taxpayer dollars to “attack” those 12 kids.
Here is the problem with that framing. Laws are not written only for today’s numbers. They are written for principles that must hold tomorrow. If fairness matters, it matters whether one athlete or one hundred athletes are involved.
And let’s be honest about the science. Even after hormone therapy, biological males retain advantages in bone density, muscle mass, lung capacity, and fast-twitch muscle fibers. You can read the data from groups like the American College of Sports Medicine. This is not a secret. It is basic physiology.
Democrats say the “learning process” is not complete. They want more study. But girls who lose roster spots, scholarships, and podium finishes do not get those years back. There is no retroactive fairness.
Some opponents of the bill raised concerns about enforcement. State Rep. Raychel Proudie worried about invasive testing and about Black female athletes being unfairly scrutinized. Those concerns deserve sober discussion. No one wants humiliating inspections or witch hunts. But here is what often gets left unsaid. The current law is already in effect. Removing the sunset does not create a new regime. It simply keeps existing protections from disappearing in four years.
If there are gaps in enforcement language, fix them. If there are safeguards needed to prevent abuse, add them. That is what legislatures are for. But do not pretend that protecting girls’ sports is itself an act of aggression.
When I watch my tiny niece chase a soccer ball across that field, ponytail bouncing, shin guards too big for her skinny legs, I don’t see politics. I see innocence. I see effort. I see a little girl learning courage in real time.
She runs as hard as she can. She falls. She pops back up. She grins like she just won the World Cup after every goal. That field is where she is building confidence brick by brick.
If a biological male ever stepped onto that field and knocked her around because adults were too cowardly to protect her category, I would move from spectator to participant in about three seconds flat.
We spent decades telling young women they deserve equal opportunity. We’ve spent the last eight years being told that protecting that opportunity is somehow bigotry.
Missouri’s House is saying no.
The bill now heads to the Senate. Democrats will likely resist again. There will be speeches about inclusion and identity. There will be accusations of hate.
If the category of women’s sports disappears, it will not be because voters demanded it. It will be because lawmakers were too timid to defend what everyone knows is true.
Missouri Republicans have decided that compromise has an expiration date.
Fairness should not.
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