On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that states are permitted to exclude transgender athletes from girls' and women's sports. It did not require them to. Connecticut remains entirely free to keep the policy it has built over 13 years. The only question now is whether our state will choose to stand by it.

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) adopted its inclusion policy in 2013, grounded in Connecticut's own anti-discrimination law. In more than a decade, the most-cited controversy involved exactly two athletes. The cisgender students who filed suit over those athletes later earned college scholarships, and in every race they ran alongside the transgender runners they were suing, they crossed the finish line first.

There is no crisis here. There is political pressure.

The Trump administration opened Title IX investigations into three Connecticut school districts, not because they violated any law, but to push states toward adopting federal exclusion goals. No Connecticut school has lost a single dollar of funding.

Transgender student athletes deserve what every other student gets from school sports: the chance to train, compete, grow, and belong. Categorical bans do not protect girls. They harm children, and they open the door to invasive scrutiny of any girl whose body does not fit a narrow definition of what female is supposed to look like.

Connecticut proved for 13 years that inclusion and competitive fairness can coexist. The Supreme Court just confirmed this state has the right to keep it that way.

Sign this petition to demand Connecticut leaders reaffirm and protect our state's inclusive school sports policy, before political pressure turns a freedom into a ban.