Supreme Court Takes on Girls’ Sports ｜ The Riley Gaines Show
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Summary
In this episode, we hear from Adelia Cross, a high school track and field athlete in the state of West Virginia, who is involved in one of the two Title IX cases being heard by the Supreme Court, Little v. Hecox and West v. BPJ.
Transcript
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Hello, you guys. Welcome back to the Riley Gaines show. If you've watched the news,
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then you know that this week was really what I would call the precipice. It feels like
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the pinnacle of the fight of keeping men and boys out of women and girls sports. This is
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something that clearly I am very deeply passionate about as it's what's really given me the platform
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that I now have. I'm going to spend Friday's episodes, a few minutes of Friday's episode
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going into what we saw on the ground. I was there on the Supreme Court steps yesterday.
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So I'm going to talk about more of that and what that looked like firsthand on Friday. Today,
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we're going to share the experience of a young girl who's involved in one of the two cases.
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There are two cases being heard, Little versus Hecox and the state of West Virginia versus BPJ.
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The girl we're talking to today, her name is Adelia Cross. She is a high school track and
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field athlete in the state of West Virginia. Her involvement is in the state of West Virginia
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versus BPJ case. Going to talk about that. But before we do, quick note from today's sponsor.
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YReFi, that is Y-R-E-F-Y.com and tell them that Riley Gaines sent you. A little background. I
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mentioned the two cases that are being heard. I want to talk today about the case West Virginia
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versus BPJ. A little background here, West Virginia, they were one of the first states to enact some sort
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of fairness in women's sports law that would ultimately prevent what has been happening in that
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state from happening. The ACLU, in true ACLU fashion, they're really good at this, they filed a lawsuit
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and ultimately sued the state of West Virginia on behalf of the boys who want to identify as girls and
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have access to their sports in their locker rooms. Now, Alliance Defending Freedom, they intervened
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in this case on behalf of female athletes. One athlete in particular, Lenny Armstead, to preserve
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women's sports. Now, West Virginia, with the help of ADF, they've appealed this case now to the U.S.
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Supreme Court. The court has now agreed to hear it. It's really a first of its kind case. I don't
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believe that the Supreme Court has heard a Title IX case in the capacity of sports before, so this will
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be a landmark case. Now, a couple key facts here. While the law was put on hold in the state of West
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Virginia, girls and women continued to be displaced over 700 times by one male athlete. That is 700
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opportunities that women lost out on forever. That is roster spots, that is podium spots, that's spots
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on the team. In the state of West Virginia, there was one male athlete, BPJ, who was allowed access to the
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girls' locker rooms. Now, because of this decision, we've seen where young women have been sexually
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harassed. Now, not only was this boy given permission to play on the girls' team, he was
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also granted access to the girls' locker room. Now, because of this decision, young women were
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sexually harassed. We're talking about middle school age girls. Adalea, the girl we're talking to today,
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honestly, she describes it as this distress. It robbed her of her passion and her love for sports
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altogether. She ultimately made the decision to quit track and field because of this experience.
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There's a Fox News article put up earlier last week with some of the comments that were alleged
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towards Adalea from this male athlete. I was hesitant on if I should even read these because
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of the expletives and the profanity, but I think it's important to understand what these young girls
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were facing. It's alleged that this male athlete told these girls to suck his male genitalia. Not
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many women that I know have this male genitalia that he's telling these young girls to suck. He also
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told these girls, allegedly, that he is going to stick his bleep in their bleep and also in their bleep.
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Now, if you can't even piece together what I'm saying, that's a problem, right? And if you don't
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think it's a problem, then you are the problem. This is so vulgar, so heinous, so profane that I
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can't even bring myself to say it. That's the language that was being directed to middle school
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age girls, all while the adults sit idly by and do nothing. Adalea and her teammates and other girls
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around the country are failed by so many. This always is like a finger pointing competition, right?
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Now, there's lots of people you can blame for this happening to Adalea and her teammates. And again,
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girls around the country. This happened under Joe Biden's leadership or lack thereof. So you can point
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a finger at Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, his VP. You can point a finger to congressional Democrats. You
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can point a finger at the school that allowed this to happen. There's a lot of people you can blame here,
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right? This happened under President Biden's administration. So you can point a finger at Joe Biden
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or his VP Kamala Harris. You can point a finger at congressional Democrats. You can point a finger
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at the school or the principal for allowing this to happen. The point I'm trying to make here
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is that so many people and institutions failed Adalea, a young girl, and now the burden is being placed
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on her. She is having to bear the burden of all the hate and the vitriol and the negativity that comes
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with using your voice so courageously and so boldly in the way that she is doing. She lost spots to
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compete in championship meets because of this male. And Adalea isn't the only one. A few years back,
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I talked to five middle school girls in the state of West Virginia who were set to compete in shot put
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against the same boy. We've got a video playing on screen here. These five middle school girls,
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uh, they ultimately, they were messaging me. It was so cute on Instagram. One girl in particular
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saying, look, me and my teammates, we don't want to compete against the boy, but we don't know what
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to do. I told them, look, I'm here for you. No matter what you do. Uh, we kind of went through
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their options. They felt as if the best option was to step inside the circle. As you're seeing here on
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the screen, act as if they were going to throw the shot put, but ultimately step out in a way to
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protest the boys inclusion on the girls shot put team. Now for this, the five young girls,
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you would think they would be like applauded for their bravery by the school. No, actually the school
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kicked them off the team. Uh, so these young girls had to sue their school to put them back on the
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girls team. What, what a, like what a mind boggling situation to where the boy is entitled to the
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girls team. And the girls are punished for saying, and, and protesting in a way that would highlight
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they believe the girls team is only for the girls. Uh, and just a sad day when you have 13,
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14 year old girls who really have to be the adults in the room, uh, by making this decision,
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uh, deciding between, you know, playing the sport that they love or standing up for what they know to
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be true, righteous, just, and fair. Uh, I could not be more inspired by and proud of these girls.
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Uh, today we were talking with Adelaia, another young girls who has had to compete against BPJ,
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her father and ADF attorney, Kristen Wagner. Check it out here.
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Well, you guys, thank you for joining the Riley Gaines show. Uh, Adelaia, before we get going,
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I just want to acknowledge that, uh, we should not have to be here. Uh, you should not have to be
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talking to me right now. Uh, there are so many people and really institutions that failed you.
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Uh, do you mind giving us a little background on yourself and sharing a little bit about when you
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first learned that a boy was going to be joining the girls track and field team?
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Uh, yeah. So hi, my name is Adelaia. I'm 17. I am in my junior year of high school. So my classes are
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pretty tough right now, but, um, I've been doing sports my whole life. I think I started at like
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two or three and, um, I've been playing an array of sports ever since. I've always enjoyed it. I
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love talking to people. So I love the team aspect of sports. And in seventh grade, I finally decided
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to stick with track and I was throwing shot, quit and discus. And the, my seventh grade year was the
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male athlete's sixth grade year. He joined the team in sixth grade year. And I remember not having
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any idea what was going on. And the day that track was starting, I started hearing rumors that there was
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going to be a boy on the girls team. And I was really confused. I hadn't really been exposed to
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things like that. I didn't really know even what it meant. And, but no teachers were talking about it.
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So I just tried to ignore it and walked into the locker room and there he was. And it was kind of
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really scary for me because I didn't know what was going on. And again, no adults were talking about
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it. So I just tried to pretend like nothing was happening. And I just tried to ignore it because
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What about your teammates in, in this environment? I can't imagine that you were the only one that was
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kind of shaken by this. Again, this is West Virginia, a state where it's not one of the usual suspects in
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things like this, right? This can almost be expected, which again, a tragedy to say in states like
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California or Michigan or Minnesota or Oregon or Washington, you name the blue state, but this was
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happening in West Virginia. What were some of those conversations like between you and your
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Yeah, definitely. We were all very confused and scared. So there were definitely whispers to each
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other because again, we just had no idea what to do in that situation. And we were all just scared
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and too scared to say anything. So we all had expressed our discomfort to each other. But there was
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nothing really more than that. I remember some of the boys were very angry about it. But they also
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didn't have a say in it. We all just kind of were confused and just kind of stuck.
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Yeah, it's a situation that you can never really fully be prepared for until it happens to you.
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And you mentioned the locker room, which I want to go back to that in a second. But let's talk about
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the competition aspect of this first. Now, this boy was allowed to compete on the girls team. Were you
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ever displaced by this male athlete in a competition?
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Yeah, so I was in seventh grade. He was in sixth grade and almost two years younger than me. So he
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hadn't hit puberty yet. So he was still kind of lying low. So I was throwing top three on our team and
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competing. And then eighth grade hit. And all of a sudden, he was throwing exponentially farther by
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like 10 to 20 feet. And that's kind of unheard of for girls. We don't do that. We progress slowly.
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And but towards the end of the season, I was getting ready to compete at one of our bigger
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meets of the year. And my coach pulled me aside and said, Hey, you've been removed from competition.
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And she seemed upset about it. But she couldn't really do anything either. So I was just, I was
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really shocked. Because in my head, I had always like, tried to ignore it because I was still
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competing. Nothing had been so you in the aspect.
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So you were directly, I mean, removed from competition because of this male athlete. And
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you know what, you're not the only athlete from West Virginia that I've talked to that,
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you know, has a similar experience. There were several girls, I forget which high school they
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were from. But it was in shot put, where they said the exact same thing. They said, Look, this
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athlete, he couldn't throw nearly as far as he was throwing just the year before. And then
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what you can only imagine, he's gone through puberty, he's throwing it 20, 30, 40 feet further
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than he was. You mentioned the locker room, I want to ask you about this, we saw an article.
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I saw it this week, it came out on Fox, with some comments that were allegedly said to you
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in this locker room setting. Honestly, Adalia, they're too vulgar for me to even like, say out
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loud, because I don't want YouTube to remove this from their platform. That's how vulgar these things
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were. Can you describe what this experience was like? Number one, sharing the locker room.
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But to have some of the things that were said to you, what it's like hearing those things?
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Yeah. So, I guess, in my seventh grade year, when he was, he was still a problem, but less of a
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problem, because he was lying low. He was always a very aggressive person, just always yelling and
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saying kind of crazy things that me or my friends or really any of the girls on the team would never
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say. But we just kind of put up with it. And then so we had kind of been conditioned to his
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aggressiveness. And then by the time eighth grade hit, and he started getting worse and saying
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things to all of us all the time. And then eventually hitting where he was whispering
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these things to me. It was just, it kind of felt like dread. I had just tried to go into practice,
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and I dreaded being around him, because I just felt like I couldn't do anything about it. And I was still
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being told by these adults in my life that this was a girl, and it was normal. And so I just felt
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really helpless, and scared and frustrated, and just all of the emotions all at once, which is
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really hard for a 14 year old and 13 year olds to deal with.
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Of course. Now, Dad, I imagine you, like, it's one thing to hear that your daughter is set to compete
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or practice with a boy. But it's another thing when your daughter is asked to non-consensually
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undress in front of a boy. When she came home and told you about the locker room scenario,
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specifically, and some of the alleged comments that were made to her, what was the response
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Yeah, I mean, initially, when she came home, you know, before the comments had started, and we knew
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about them and stuff like that, we were just super, like confused. I mean, as you said, you know,
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this is happening in West Virginia, I myself went to the same middle school, know a lot of the
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administrators and stuff like that. And for no one to, like, even reach out to us at the beginning and
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say anything, just, you know, pretend like that's a girl in the locker room with them, at first was a
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really big shock to us, right? So, you know, there's girls going to school in their practice
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uniforms, so they don't have to change in the locker room. You know, it was just, it was really
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confusing and kind of like a helpless feeling that I had. You know, a lot of anger and stuff.
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It was kind of hard to deal with and process, you know, as her protector and provider. So that was
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difficult, you know, from the start. And then just, you know, once she came home and told us about
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these comments that were extremely, obviously, lewd that we can't say here, you know, it's just
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like heartbreaking. You know, you have all these rush of emotions of like anger and like sadness.
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You know, everybody wants to talk about the physical kind of side of this of, you know,
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getting hurt in the locker room and, you know, all of that stuff. But I mean, also, there's a mental
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component that comes along with this, like, you know, now my daughter's gonna have to wonder for
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the rest of her life, like, is there a man in this bathroom with me? You know, so it's just like,
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you have all these wave of emotions that were really difficult to process.
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And honestly, that's what I don't think a lot of people, you know, your critics, my critics,
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understand is like the emotional and the mental toll that this takes, especially on young girls.
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I mean, we're talking about middle school age girls at this point. It's a pretty horrific thing
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to be in a locker room undressing, which think about a middle school girls locker room, like it's not a
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comfortable place in general when you're changing in front of your own sex, but to add a boy into that
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mix, like every, any amount of vulnerability that you thought you had is thrown out of the window when
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you hear a boy's voice in that locker room. And yes, it is something that certainly takes a toll on
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you. Were you able to report this, what I would describe as sexual harassment?
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Were you able to report that to the school? And if so, what was their response?
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Yeah. So, I mean, immediately upon Adalia telling us, you know, what was said, we called the school,
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asked for an in-person meeting with the administrators. Like I said, I went to school
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there. I know some of the administrators, you know, for, you know, to report sexual harassment.
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They said they just wanted to talk on the phone. So we kind of reported everything that had been
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happening, uh, named other students, um, coaches that had heard this type of language, maybe not
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specifically what she had heard, but, you know, the other lewd comments that are being thrown around.
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Um, so, so we reported all that with kind of full faith that, you know, this would be kind of handled.
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Um, Adalia would be protected at least given like a safe space temporarily. Um, so after we reported it,
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we never heard anything back. Um, you know, they initially called Adalia into the office,
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told her not to tell anybody, but they were going to do an investigation. And, um, you know,
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as far as we know, I don't know of any investigation that had happened. Um, but, you know, it's just,
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we couldn't believe that this is how it was addressed. Several months went by and no response at all.
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That is crazy to me that number one, uh, they attempted to silence you and saying, you know,
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don't tell anyone. Uh, but two, that there's even an investigation needed. I understand needing to
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investigate the comments. Sure. It's one person's word against another person's, but at the end of
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the day, again, there's a boy in the girl's locker room. Uh, what beyond knowing that fact right there
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is needed in an investigation to tell you that this is wrong. Uh, now Adalia, you ultimately
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made the decision to walk away from the sport that you loved. Uh, and I was reading in the article,
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the Fox article that I alluded to, uh, that you did this in order to protect yourself. And so can you
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explain this? Like what personal cost in terms of, you know, socially, psychologically, even your
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future opportunities, uh, what personal cost is walking away from the sport that you loved?
00:20:48.840
Yeah. So, um, my eighth grade year after this happened, um, I, we had a bunch of celebrations
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for eighth graders. Um, cause it's the last year of middle school and they're moving on to high school.
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I did not attend any, I had no interest in going to practice, no, like going to anything where the
00:21:08.080
male athlete would be placed. And I just wanted nothing to do with it. Um, I was ready for my
00:21:14.520
freshman year because he wouldn't be there. He was still in middle school and I had one for a year
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without him. And all year I kind of wrestled with whether or not to do it my sophomore year,
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um, because he would be on the team with me again. And, um, because I had to weigh in,
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I'm such a social person. One of my favorite parts of track was competing with my friends
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and just getting to talk to new people. I love meeting new people at track meets and the thought
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of losing that, but also I have to protect myself. It was really hard all year. And my friends were
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asking about it. They didn't want me to quit, but they understood why I wanted to. They were all
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uncomfortable, but it was just, it was really tough all in all. So eventually I did decide to quit.
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I have not been back since my freshman year. Um, and honestly, what hits me the most other than
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not being with my friends and my friends talking about how they missed me on the team and they wish
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I would come back, um, is that my friends, my female friends are still changing the locker room with
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him. They're still ignoring his aggressive comments. They're still getting their spots taken.
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Uh, girls from other schools are still competing against him, getting, um, their chances taken away
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from them. They're, I know everybody there is still uncomfortable and they're still not okay with it.
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And they'd feel like they can't do anything at all. And that's really what hurts me the most
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is that all of these people are still dealing with what I had to deal with.
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Uh, which is a lot of people can't really understand. I think the origin of this big case,
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uh, that was heard earlier this week, uh, the state of West Virginia versus BPJ, given the fact that
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West, West Virginia had a law in the books that would ultimately prevent what happened to you from
00:23:04.120
happening. Uh, Kristen, can you explain the origin of this case and what it is specifically that the
00:23:11.640
court will be deciding on? Sure. Well, uh, all the way back in 2017, we started to see boys identifying
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as girls, uh, starting to compete in the girls category and lawsuits were initially filed during
00:23:27.320
those seasons and other legislators from other States began to hear about them both in West Virginia
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and in Idaho legislators stepped up to protect the girls and they pass laws to ensure that there
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would be sex-based sports, sex-based categories. West Virginia and Idaho were among the very first to
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do that, but BPJ, which is the male athlete that Adelaide is referring to, filed a lawsuit challenging
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the law. And there was an injunction that was entered that allowed BPJ to continue to compete on the
00:24:01.200
girls team in the middle school and to go into the locker room. I've been dying to add some commentary
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here from the legal side. This is the case that was heard at the Supreme court this week. And what we
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know from the extensive briefing that has occurred is that BPJ didn't just displace Adelaide, but over
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400 girls have been displaced over 1,100 times and he has taken 57 medals during the middle school
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period from those girls. In addition, there were five girls that stood to protest and in fact declined
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to compete against BPJ to stand for their rights, to use their voice. And the school actually punished
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those girls. They had to file a lawsuit so that they wouldn't be punished. This is all going on in
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West Virginia in this case at the court. And the last thing that I think is so important about this
00:24:57.940
goes to the vulgar threats that went against Adelaide. As a mother, to know that there was a boy
00:25:05.760
in that room that is walking up behind a girl whispering, not just vulgar comments, but sexually
00:25:12.800
violent threats is astonishing. And it just in one more way underscores why this is a bad idea,
00:25:21.620
why women deserve not only equal opportunities, but safety and privacy and what's at stake in this
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case. The ACLU is asking not for equal treatment, but for special treatment. And they are essentially
00:25:34.620
running over the rights of women and girls in the process.
00:25:37.560
Well, of course, that's the tried and true tactics of the ACLU. To hear those numbers that you
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mentioned, I mean, just to repeat one back that this one male athlete has taken 57 medals away from
00:25:54.620
deserving girls. I mean, we don't see this happening the other way. Remarkable to me that
00:26:03.200
there is an entire political party, and I'm pretty specifically referring to in terms of elected
00:26:11.160
representation and certainly how the media portrays it, that is on the side of the boy,
00:26:17.600
the boy who, I mean, to put it in plain words, flashes himself and makes vulgar comments to young
00:26:25.020
women without their consent. That is who the side, that is the side of who the Democrats are taking.
00:26:30.960
I believe there was a, I think, 130 congressional Democrats who signed on to an amicus brief
00:26:38.160
supporting that male athlete in the upcoming Supreme Court review. Insane stuff. I'm not going
00:26:46.660
to ask you, Kristen, to, you know, predict what the ruling will be. It should come out sometime in
00:26:52.340
June or July. Is that right? It will come out in June. We were privileged to represent female
00:26:57.640
athletes, and there are actually two cases, and they were heard together, both the Idaho and the
00:27:03.540
West Virginia case. And I think it's important to recognize that the Idaho case involved a collegiate
00:27:09.480
athlete, a collegiate athlete, male athlete. And in that case, the female athletes that we represented,
00:27:15.340
they were also beaten at the collegiate level by a male athlete. And then the BPJ case involves
00:27:22.280
the K-12. And essentially, the argument the ACLU is making there is that BPJ was placed on puberty
00:27:29.820
blockers. And so that's different than perhaps testosterone suppressants. But again, we know from
00:27:35.800
the science that is well documented in this case that even puberty blockers do not erase the physical
00:27:42.260
advantages that boys have over girls because of the way that they are created, just physiologically
00:27:48.720
and anatomically. And we can also just see that from what happened to Adelaide and to those 400 other
00:27:58.700
With the makeup of the court now, I'm hopeful, I'm very optimistic that we will have a ruling
00:28:05.100
in favor of young girls like Adelaide. But then again, we have a sitting Supreme Court justice who says
00:28:14.180
she doesn't know what a woman is. We've got a clip here. Let's watch it.
00:28:18.620
Can you provide a definition for the word woman?
00:28:36.340
Can we expect Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to rule on the side of common
00:28:47.300
Well, as an advocate before the court, it probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to
00:28:51.440
speculate. But I think that having listened to and been in the courtroom during the oral
00:28:56.200
argument, we can predict that I think that the court, it takes nine votes. There are nine votes
00:29:02.640
that are available. And our hope is that justice will prevail for girls. And our expectation is
00:29:09.120
that it will as well. We believe that both Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution
00:29:15.020
permit biological distinctions. And I think that as we heard the oral argument, the court is going
00:29:23.980
Now, Adelaide, I know that you know that people on both sides feel very strongly about this ongoing
00:29:31.800
debate. What do you wish your critics better understood about your experience or how you feel
00:29:38.700
that maybe isn't reported on accurately or even at all?
00:29:47.380
I would say that I would hope people understand that I don't want BPJ's rights taken away.
00:29:57.860
I still want him to be able to compete. I still want him to have a high school experience. I just
00:30:05.240
want him to do it for the boys team and to stop hurting me and other girls and taking our rights
00:30:13.080
away from us and really just violating us in the process. He doesn't get to have our locker room
00:30:27.160
Yeah, it's all the time. People will go online to call those like yourself and myself transphobic
00:30:35.780
or hateful or bigoted. But I'm right there with you. The stand that you're taking, it's not one
00:30:42.480
that's hateful. It's not out of a place of animosity or ill will towards any one person or specific group
00:30:48.440
of people. The stand that you're taking, I know that ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, is taking in
00:30:53.820
the courtroom that I'm taking, that your dad, it's one that is standing for something, not against
00:30:59.560
anyone, any group of people. You're standing for women. You're standing for girls. You're standing for
00:31:05.600
your younger siblings, your younger sister. You're standing for fairness. You're standing for reality
00:31:11.700
and truth and privacy in areas of undressing and safety in your sports and beyond. The stand that
00:31:18.280
you're taking is one that is very pro-woman, not anti-trans. And so last question for you, Adalea,
00:31:26.620
with all that you've been through the past few years now, do you believe that speaking out was worth it?
00:31:35.240
Yes, everything we've done. I would not go back and change it. It has been quite stressful for me.
00:31:42.680
I've received a lot of backlash from a very small group, a very small vocal group at my school and
00:31:49.640
in my community. But I wouldn't change it for anything. I just want my friends and just my fellow
00:31:57.300
girls to have their rights back. And we are hoping that that's the outcome that we will get in June,
00:32:04.040
I think. And dad, I would imagine you're very proud of Adalea. Oh, the most proud. So she's,
00:32:15.220
she's a special person. So it takes a special person to, you know, do what's right, even when it's
00:32:22.740
hard. And we've always tried to instill that in her. And she's, she's always done that. So we're,
00:32:28.680
we're very proud of her, my mother, or her mother and I. So yeah, she's a special person.
00:32:38.360
Well, Adalea, I think you'll be in history books. And I think you'll be certainly on the right side
00:32:45.480
of things. I hope it's not long before we can comprehensively, you know, as a society,
00:32:52.020
look back on this time, this weird blip of time that we're living in, where we have, I mean,
00:32:58.660
people from the top down, especially in the previous administration, who are telling people
00:33:03.460
that they're correct to feel as if they're born in the wrong body. We have healthcare providers who
00:33:09.240
are prescribing these unnatural synthetic chemicals and hormones to children, not to mention the
00:33:16.280
unregulated child butchery that we're seeing in those who are getting healthy body parts removed.
00:33:22.120
I hope it's not long before we can look back and call this time what it is, which is utterly insane,
00:33:30.280
deeply misogynistic, and insanely regressive. They love to use the word progressive, right?
00:33:37.700
Indicating that we are moving in the positive forward direction. But what happened to you,
00:33:43.120
Adalea, what continues to happen to girls around the country?
00:33:46.280
It's taking us back in time. I mean, more than half a century at this point,
00:33:52.020
before women had rights to compete fairly in their sports and beyond. So thank you for using
00:33:58.700
your voice so boldly and so bravely. You're a role model to me, and I know you're a role model to so
00:34:05.440
many people who are watching and listening today. So I admire you and excited for a hopefully great