Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - Supreme Court Takes on Girls’ Sports ｜ The Riley Gaines Show

00:00:00.000 Hello, you guys. Welcome back to the Riley Gaines show. If you've watched the news,

00:00:09.480 then you know that this week was really what I would call the precipice. It feels like

00:00:15.320 the pinnacle of the fight of keeping men and boys out of women and girls sports. This is 0.66

00:00:22.800 something that clearly I am very deeply passionate about as it's what's really given me the platform

00:00:29.600 that I now have. I'm going to spend Friday's episodes, a few minutes of Friday's episode

00:00:35.620 going into what we saw on the ground. I was there on the Supreme Court steps yesterday.

00:00:41.220 So I'm going to talk about more of that and what that looked like firsthand on Friday. Today,

00:00:45.900 we're going to share the experience of a young girl who's involved in one of the two cases.

00:00:50.900 There are two cases being heard, Little versus Hecox and the state of West Virginia versus BPJ.

00:00:56.680 The girl we're talking to today, her name is Adelia Cross. She is a high school track and 0.99

00:01:01.960 field athlete in the state of West Virginia. Her involvement is in the state of West Virginia

00:01:06.400 versus BPJ case. Going to talk about that. But before we do, quick note from today's sponsor.

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00:02:12.540 YReFi, that is Y-R-E-F-Y.com and tell them that Riley Gaines sent you. A little background. I

00:02:19.980 mentioned the two cases that are being heard. I want to talk today about the case West Virginia

00:02:24.740 versus BPJ. A little background here, West Virginia, they were one of the first states to enact some sort

00:02:31.780 of fairness in women's sports law that would ultimately prevent what has been happening in that 0.98

00:02:36.540 state from happening. The ACLU, in true ACLU fashion, they're really good at this, they filed a lawsuit

00:02:42.760 and ultimately sued the state of West Virginia on behalf of the boys who want to identify as girls and

00:02:50.460 have access to their sports in their locker rooms. Now, Alliance Defending Freedom, they intervened

00:02:55.960 in this case on behalf of female athletes. One athlete in particular, Lenny Armstead, to preserve

00:03:02.960 women's sports. Now, West Virginia, with the help of ADF, they've appealed this case now to the U.S.

00:03:08.340 Supreme Court. The court has now agreed to hear it. It's really a first of its kind case. I don't

00:03:14.140 believe that the Supreme Court has heard a Title IX case in the capacity of sports before, so this will

00:03:20.720 be a landmark case. Now, a couple key facts here. While the law was put on hold in the state of West

00:03:27.680 Virginia, girls and women continued to be displaced over 700 times by one male athlete. That is 700

00:03:37.480 opportunities that women lost out on forever. That is roster spots, that is podium spots, that's spots 1.00

00:03:44.440 on the team. In the state of West Virginia, there was one male athlete, BPJ, who was allowed access to the

00:03:51.100 girls' locker rooms. Now, because of this decision, we've seen where young women have been sexually 1.00

00:03:56.900 harassed. Now, not only was this boy given permission to play on the girls' team, he was

00:04:01.660 also granted access to the girls' locker room. Now, because of this decision, young women were 0.98

00:04:08.040 sexually harassed. We're talking about middle school age girls. Adalea, the girl we're talking to today,

00:04:16.080 honestly, she describes it as this distress. It robbed her of her passion and her love for sports

00:04:24.000 altogether. She ultimately made the decision to quit track and field because of this experience.

00:04:30.360 There's a Fox News article put up earlier last week with some of the comments that were alleged

00:04:34.800 towards Adalea from this male athlete. I was hesitant on if I should even read these because

00:04:40.060 of the expletives and the profanity, but I think it's important to understand what these young girls

00:04:47.600 were facing. It's alleged that this male athlete told these girls to suck his male genitalia. Not 0.99

00:04:57.160 many women that I know have this male genitalia that he's telling these young girls to suck. He also 1.00

00:05:03.620 told these girls, allegedly, that he is going to stick his bleep in their bleep and also in their bleep.

00:05:10.520 Now, if you can't even piece together what I'm saying, that's a problem, right? And if you don't

00:05:15.600 think it's a problem, then you are the problem. This is so vulgar, so heinous, so profane that I

00:05:22.660 can't even bring myself to say it. That's the language that was being directed to middle school

00:05:28.820 age girls, all while the adults sit idly by and do nothing. Adalea and her teammates and other girls

00:05:35.940 around the country are failed by so many. This always is like a finger pointing competition, right?

00:05:41.920 Now, there's lots of people you can blame for this happening to Adalea and her teammates. And again,

00:05:47.100 girls around the country. This happened under Joe Biden's leadership or lack thereof. So you can point

00:05:52.620 a finger at Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, his VP. You can point a finger to congressional Democrats. You

00:05:58.760 can point a finger at the school that allowed this to happen. There's a lot of people you can blame here,

00:06:03.140 right? This happened under President Biden's administration. So you can point a finger at Joe Biden

00:06:07.820 or his VP Kamala Harris. You can point a finger at congressional Democrats. You can point a finger

00:06:12.100 at the school or the principal for allowing this to happen. The point I'm trying to make here

00:06:16.160 is that so many people and institutions failed Adalea, a young girl, and now the burden is being placed

00:06:24.760 on her. She is having to bear the burden of all the hate and the vitriol and the negativity that comes

00:06:31.380 with using your voice so courageously and so boldly in the way that she is doing. She lost spots to

00:06:39.080 compete in championship meets because of this male. And Adalea isn't the only one. A few years back,

00:06:45.180 I talked to five middle school girls in the state of West Virginia who were set to compete in shot put 0.69

00:06:50.720 against the same boy. We've got a video playing on screen here. These five middle school girls,

00:06:58.000 uh, they ultimately, they were messaging me. It was so cute on Instagram. One girl in particular

00:07:02.180 saying, look, me and my teammates, we don't want to compete against the boy, but we don't know what

00:07:05.920 to do. I told them, look, I'm here for you. No matter what you do. Uh, we kind of went through

00:07:10.180 their options. They felt as if the best option was to step inside the circle. As you're seeing here on

00:07:15.820 the screen, act as if they were going to throw the shot put, but ultimately step out in a way to

00:07:21.340 protest the boys inclusion on the girls shot put team. Now for this, the five young girls,

00:07:28.860 you would think they would be like applauded for their bravery by the school. No, actually the school

00:07:33.720 kicked them off the team. Uh, so these young girls had to sue their school to put them back on the 1.00

00:07:41.720 girls team. What, what a, like what a mind boggling situation to where the boy is entitled to the

00:07:49.820 girls team. And the girls are punished for saying, and, and protesting in a way that would highlight 0.63

00:07:55.200 they believe the girls team is only for the girls. Uh, and just a sad day when you have 13,

00:08:01.560 14 year old girls who really have to be the adults in the room, uh, by making this decision,

00:08:08.440 uh, deciding between, you know, playing the sport that they love or standing up for what they know to

00:08:14.140 be true, righteous, just, and fair. Uh, I could not be more inspired by and proud of these girls.

00:08:20.740 Uh, today we were talking with Adelaia, another young girls who has had to compete against BPJ,

00:08:26.200 her father and ADF attorney, Kristen Wagner. Check it out here.

00:08:31.300 Well, you guys, thank you for joining the Riley Gaines show. Uh, Adelaia, before we get going,

00:08:36.220 I just want to acknowledge that, uh, we should not have to be here. Uh, you should not have to be

00:08:42.160 talking to me right now. Uh, there are so many people and really institutions that failed you.

00:08:48.140 Uh, do you mind giving us a little background on yourself and sharing a little bit about when you

00:08:53.520 first learned that a boy was going to be joining the girls track and field team?

00:08:59.480 Uh, yeah. So hi, my name is Adelaia. I'm 17. I am in my junior year of high school. So my classes are

00:09:07.560 pretty tough right now, but, um, I've been doing sports my whole life. I think I started at like

00:09:14.200 two or three and, um, I've been playing an array of sports ever since. I've always enjoyed it. I

00:09:20.900 love talking to people. So I love the team aspect of sports. And in seventh grade, I finally decided

00:09:27.400 to stick with track and I was throwing shot, quit and discus. And the, my seventh grade year was the

00:09:35.520 male athlete's sixth grade year. He joined the team in sixth grade year. And I remember not having

00:09:41.920 any idea what was going on. And the day that track was starting, I started hearing rumors that there was

00:09:48.540 going to be a boy on the girls team. And I was really confused. I hadn't really been exposed to

00:09:54.000 things like that. I didn't really know even what it meant. And, but no teachers were talking about it.

00:09:59.180 So I just tried to ignore it and walked into the locker room and there he was. And it was kind of

00:10:06.580 really scary for me because I didn't know what was going on. And again, no adults were talking about

00:10:11.320 it. So I just tried to pretend like nothing was happening. And I just tried to ignore it because

00:10:17.920 I was just kind of clueless.

00:10:19.980 What about your teammates in, in this environment? I can't imagine that you were the only one that was

00:10:29.740 kind of shaken by this. Again, this is West Virginia, a state where it's not one of the usual suspects in

00:10:36.200 things like this, right? This can almost be expected, which again, a tragedy to say in states like

00:10:41.720 California or Michigan or Minnesota or Oregon or Washington, you name the blue state, but this was

00:10:47.880 happening in West Virginia. What were some of those conversations like between you and your

00:10:53.460 teammates?

00:10:55.640 Yeah, definitely. We were all very confused and scared. So there were definitely whispers to each

00:11:04.980 other because again, we just had no idea what to do in that situation. And we were all just scared

00:11:12.180 and too scared to say anything. So we all had expressed our discomfort to each other. But there was

00:11:18.220 nothing really more than that. I remember some of the boys were very angry about it. But they also

00:11:24.420 didn't have a say in it. We all just kind of were confused and just kind of stuck.

00:11:33.660 Yeah, it's a situation that you can never really fully be prepared for until it happens to you.

00:11:39.640 And you mentioned the locker room, which I want to go back to that in a second. But let's talk about

00:11:44.020 the competition aspect of this first. Now, this boy was allowed to compete on the girls team. Were you

00:11:51.900 ever displaced by this male athlete in a competition?

00:11:58.680 Yeah, so I was in seventh grade. He was in sixth grade and almost two years younger than me. So he

00:12:05.080 hadn't hit puberty yet. So he was still kind of lying low. So I was throwing top three on our team and

00:12:12.960 competing. And then eighth grade hit. And all of a sudden, he was throwing exponentially farther by

00:12:19.220 like 10 to 20 feet. And that's kind of unheard of for girls. We don't do that. We progress slowly.

00:12:25.460 And but towards the end of the season, I was getting ready to compete at one of our bigger

00:12:31.760 meets of the year. And my coach pulled me aside and said, Hey, you've been removed from competition.

00:12:37.880 And she seemed upset about it. But she couldn't really do anything either. So I was just, I was

00:12:45.820 really shocked. Because in my head, I had always like, tried to ignore it because I was still

00:12:52.280 competing. Nothing had been so you in the aspect.

00:12:56.820 So you were directly, I mean, removed from competition because of this male athlete. And

00:13:06.000 you know what, you're not the only athlete from West Virginia that I've talked to that,

00:13:11.080 you know, has a similar experience. There were several girls, I forget which high school they 1.00

00:13:15.780 were from. But it was in shot put, where they said the exact same thing. They said, Look, this

00:13:21.760 athlete, he couldn't throw nearly as far as he was throwing just the year before. And then

00:13:28.140 what you can only imagine, he's gone through puberty, he's throwing it 20, 30, 40 feet further

00:13:34.120 than he was. You mentioned the locker room, I want to ask you about this, we saw an article.

00:13:40.480 I saw it this week, it came out on Fox, with some comments that were allegedly said to you

00:13:47.440 in this locker room setting. Honestly, Adalia, they're too vulgar for me to even like, say out

00:13:54.940 loud, because I don't want YouTube to remove this from their platform. That's how vulgar these things

00:14:01.480 were. Can you describe what this experience was like? Number one, sharing the locker room.

00:14:08.680 But to have some of the things that were said to you, what it's like hearing those things?

00:14:13.640 Yeah. So, I guess, in my seventh grade year, when he was, he was still a problem, but less of a

00:14:24.080 problem, because he was lying low. He was always a very aggressive person, just always yelling and

00:14:30.700 saying kind of crazy things that me or my friends or really any of the girls on the team would never

00:14:35.680 say. But we just kind of put up with it. And then so we had kind of been conditioned to his

00:14:41.540 aggressiveness. And then by the time eighth grade hit, and he started getting worse and saying

00:14:46.300 things to all of us all the time. And then eventually hitting where he was whispering

00:14:52.440 these things to me. It was just, it kind of felt like dread. I had just tried to go into practice,

00:14:59.780 and I dreaded being around him, because I just felt like I couldn't do anything about it. And I was still

00:15:05.580 being told by these adults in my life that this was a girl, and it was normal. And so I just felt

00:15:11.440 really helpless, and scared and frustrated, and just all of the emotions all at once, which is

00:15:17.780 really hard for a 14 year old and 13 year olds to deal with.

00:15:23.340 Of course. Now, Dad, I imagine you, like, it's one thing to hear that your daughter is set to compete

00:15:30.380 or practice with a boy. But it's another thing when your daughter is asked to non-consensually

00:15:37.580 undress in front of a boy. When she came home and told you about the locker room scenario,

00:15:44.780 specifically, and some of the alleged comments that were made to her, what was the response

00:15:50.740 and the thoughts that you had?

00:15:54.040 Yeah, I mean, initially, when she came home, you know, before the comments had started, and we knew

00:15:59.320 about them and stuff like that, we were just super, like confused. I mean, as you said, you know,

00:16:03.940 this is happening in West Virginia, I myself went to the same middle school, know a lot of the

00:16:09.460 administrators and stuff like that. And for no one to, like, even reach out to us at the beginning and

00:16:15.200 say anything, just, you know, pretend like that's a girl in the locker room with them, at first was a

00:16:20.940 really big shock to us, right? So, you know, there's girls going to school in their practice 1.00

00:16:27.900 uniforms, so they don't have to change in the locker room. You know, it was just, it was really

00:16:33.580 confusing and kind of like a helpless feeling that I had. You know, a lot of anger and stuff.

00:16:39.700 It was kind of hard to deal with and process, you know, as her protector and provider. So that was

00:16:48.160 difficult, you know, from the start. And then just, you know, once she came home and told us about

00:16:54.740 these comments that were extremely, obviously, lewd that we can't say here, you know, it's just

00:17:01.220 like heartbreaking. You know, you have all these rush of emotions of like anger and like sadness.

00:17:10.640 You know, everybody wants to talk about the physical kind of side of this of, you know,

00:17:15.860 getting hurt in the locker room and, you know, all of that stuff. But I mean, also, there's a mental

00:17:21.120 component that comes along with this, like, you know, now my daughter's gonna have to wonder for

00:17:25.380 the rest of her life, like, is there a man in this bathroom with me? You know, so it's just like,

00:17:30.920 you have all these wave of emotions that were really difficult to process.

00:17:37.800 And honestly, that's what I don't think a lot of people, you know, your critics, my critics,

00:17:43.940 understand is like the emotional and the mental toll that this takes, especially on young girls.

00:17:49.100 I mean, we're talking about middle school age girls at this point. It's a pretty horrific thing

00:17:55.060 to be in a locker room undressing, which think about a middle school girls locker room, like it's not a 0.88

00:18:02.060 comfortable place in general when you're changing in front of your own sex, but to add a boy into that 0.85

00:18:09.480 mix, like every, any amount of vulnerability that you thought you had is thrown out of the window when

00:18:17.420 you hear a boy's voice in that locker room. And yes, it is something that certainly takes a toll on

00:18:22.680 you. Were you able to report this, what I would describe as sexual harassment?

00:18:30.640 Were you able to report that to the school? And if so, what was their response?

00:18:34.920 Yeah. So, I mean, immediately upon Adalia telling us, you know, what was said, we called the school,

00:18:43.080 asked for an in-person meeting with the administrators. Like I said, I went to school

00:18:47.140 there. I know some of the administrators, you know, for, you know, to report sexual harassment.

00:18:54.180 They said they just wanted to talk on the phone. So we kind of reported everything that had been

00:18:59.200 happening, uh, named other students, um, coaches that had heard this type of language, maybe not

00:19:05.440 specifically what she had heard, but, you know, the other lewd comments that are being thrown around.

00:19:11.500 Um, so, so we reported all that with kind of full faith that, you know, this would be kind of handled.

00:19:17.400 Um, Adalia would be protected at least given like a safe space temporarily. Um, so after we reported it,

00:19:25.480 we never heard anything back. Um, you know, they initially called Adalia into the office,

00:19:31.400 told her not to tell anybody, but they were going to do an investigation. And, um, you know,

00:19:37.400 as far as we know, I don't know of any investigation that had happened. Um, but, you know, it's just,

00:19:44.080 we couldn't believe that this is how it was addressed. Several months went by and no response at all.

00:19:49.960 Nothing.

00:19:50.260 That is crazy to me that number one, uh, they attempted to silence you and saying, you know,

00:19:58.960 don't tell anyone. Uh, but two, that there's even an investigation needed. I understand needing to

00:20:05.360 investigate the comments. Sure. It's one person's word against another person's, but at the end of

00:20:09.340 the day, again, there's a boy in the girl's locker room. Uh, what beyond knowing that fact right there

00:20:15.060 is needed in an investigation to tell you that this is wrong. Uh, now Adalia, you ultimately

00:20:21.800 made the decision to walk away from the sport that you loved. Uh, and I was reading in the article,

00:20:28.420 the Fox article that I alluded to, uh, that you did this in order to protect yourself. And so can you

00:20:33.720 explain this? Like what personal cost in terms of, you know, socially, psychologically, even your

00:20:40.140 future opportunities, uh, what personal cost is walking away from the sport that you loved?

00:20:45.220 What costs did that have for you?

00:20:48.840 Yeah. So, um, my eighth grade year after this happened, um, I, we had a bunch of celebrations

00:20:56.960 for eighth graders. Um, cause it's the last year of middle school and they're moving on to high school.

00:21:00.780 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

00:21:19.720 without him. And all year I kind of wrestled with whether or not to do it my sophomore year,

00:21:25.860 um, because he would be on the team with me again. And, um, because I had to weigh in,

00:21:32.840 I'm such a social person. One of my favorite parts of track was competing with my friends

00:21:37.860 and just getting to talk to new people. I love meeting new people at track meets and the thought

00:21:43.060 of losing that, but also I have to protect myself. It was really hard all year. And my friends were

00:21:48.760 asking about it. They didn't want me to quit, but they understood why I wanted to. They were all

00:21:53.380 uncomfortable, but it was just, it was really tough all in all. So eventually I did decide to quit.

00:22:00.620 I have not been back since my freshman year. Um, and honestly, what hits me the most other than

00:22:07.940 not being with my friends and my friends talking about how they missed me on the team and they wish

00:22:11.880 I would come back, um, is that my friends, my female friends are still changing the locker room with 1.00

00:22:18.540 him. They're still ignoring his aggressive comments. They're still getting their spots taken.

00:22:24.920 Uh, girls from other schools are still competing against him, getting, um, their chances taken away

00:22:29.660 from them. They're, I know everybody there is still uncomfortable and they're still not okay with it.

00:22:34.620 And they'd feel like they can't do anything at all. And that's really what hurts me the most

00:22:39.120 is that all of these people are still dealing with what I had to deal with.

00:22:44.580 Uh, which is a lot of people can't really understand. I think the origin of this big case,

00:22:51.480 uh, that was heard earlier this week, uh, the state of West Virginia versus BPJ, given the fact that

00:22:58.020 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

00:23:20.620 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

00:23:33.320 and in Idaho legislators stepped up to protect the girls and they pass laws to ensure that there 0.94

00:23:39.120 would be sex-based sports, sex-based categories. West Virginia and Idaho were among the very first to

00:23:45.740 do that, but BPJ, which is the male athlete that Adelaide is referring to, filed a lawsuit challenging

00:23:53.680 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

00:24:08.420 here from the legal side. This is the case that was heard at the Supreme court this week. And what we

00:24:14.560 know from the extensive briefing that has occurred is that BPJ didn't just displace Adelaide, but over

00:24:21.780 400 girls have been displaced over 1,100 times and he has taken 57 medals during the middle school

00:24:31.120 period from those girls. In addition, there were five girls that stood to protest and in fact declined

00:24:38.840 to compete against BPJ to stand for their rights, to use their voice. And the school actually punished

00:24:45.480 those girls. They had to file a lawsuit so that they wouldn't be punished. This is all going on in

00:24:52.160 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 1.00

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 0.81

00:25:27.500 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

00:25:47.280 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. 1.00

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 0.57

00:27:48.720 and anatomically. And we can also just see that from what happened to Adelaide and to those 400 other

00:27:54.760 girls.

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. 1.00

00:28:18.620 Can you provide a definition for the word woman?

00:28:23.760 Can I provide a definition?

00:28:25.480 No.

00:28:26.060 Yeah.

00:28:27.260 I can't.

00:28:28.860 You can't?

00:28:31.800 Not in this context. I'm not a biologist.

00:28:35.160 She's not a biologist.

00:28:36.340 Can we expect Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to rule on the side of common

00:28:43.280 sense? Or is that just like wishful thinking?

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

00:29:20.860 to affirm that as well.

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

00:30:22.260 space. I'm sorry, as well as the boys.

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, 0.87

00:33:30.280 deeply misogynistic, and insanely regressive. They love to use the word progressive, right? 0.66

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? 0.99

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

00:34:12.240 outcome in June.

00:34:16.280 I

00:34:25.660 yeah.

00:34:26.340 you

00:34:30.560 you

00:34:30.780 you

00:34:30.840 you

00:34:34.020 you

Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - January 14, 2026

Supreme Court Takes on Girls’ Sports ｜ The Riley Gaines Show

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