North Cook News

Prominent Illinois conservatives are rebuking the state’s high school sports authority over its refusal to comply with a federal executive order on transgender athletes by continuing to allow biological males' participation in female sports. 

Kathy Myalls, former New Trier Township GOP chair and a past candidate for the Illinois House, called the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) policy “lunacy.” 

“Illinois' rejection of the commonsense notion that boys should not compete against girls in sports is another hypocritical position by the woke mob in Illinois, who defers to ‘science’ only when it is politically expedient,” Myalls told North Cook News. “There is little more scientifically certain than the fact that regardless of the way someone dresses, acts, or surgically reconstructs themself, you cannot make a male into a female or vice versa.” 

Her remarks come amid a growing national dispute following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” 

The executive order directs the Department of Education to enforce Title IX by reserving female sports for biological females, and it warns of rescinding federal funding from institutions that do not comply.

The IHSA, however, says it is not subject to those penalties.

IHSA's adherence to allowing biological males in female sports came in response to a letter from 40 Republican state lawmakers seeking clarity on the IHSA’s stance with the executive order. The association said its policies are guided by the Illinois Human Rights Act and state agency guidance, which allow student-athletes to compete based on gender identity.

Myalls challenged that rationale, arguing that scientific and athletic realities are being ignored.

“It is lunacy,” she said. “Everything you need to know about the physical advantage of biological males comes in one incontrovertible observation: there are no biological women stealing podium spots, medals, scholarships or accolades from men.” 

“There is not one biological woman claiming to be a man who has beat the elite men in any sport. There are no women winning men's swimming competitions, track and field events, fencing, weight lifting, or wrestling events. If hormones can reduce a biological man's advantage, why can't those same hormones make biological women competitive in male sports?” 

Myalls said the current policy not only undermines fairness but also calls into question the very purpose of gender-specific athletic categories.

“If anyone can compete as a woman simply by declaring that they identify as such, then why do we even have women's sports?” she said.  

The ISHA controversy comes on the heels of Title IX investigations launched by the Department of Justice into the Illinois Department of Education, Chicago Public Schools District 299 and locally at Deerfield Public Schools District 109, where female students at Deerfield Middle School say they were forced to undress in front of a biological male in a girls' locker room. 

The IHSA has been subject to criticism from advocacy groups like Awake Illinois, which blasted the association for “sacrificing the rights of girls to appease gender ideology.”

The case of Abbigail Wheeler, a swimmer dismissed from her YMCA team in 2023 after objecting to share facilities with a biological male transgender athlete, has also resurfaced in public debate. Wheeler has since become a vocal advocate for sex-based sports categories.

IHSA Assistant Executive Director Matt Troha told Prairie State Wire that the organization has not altered its policy in response to the executive order and that no recent vote on the issue has occurred. 

Meanwhile, the association’s 10-member board of directors, made up of school principals across Illinois, declined to comment individually. 

Myalls warned that history may judge the current moment harshly.

“History will look back at us in horror at what we are doing to our children,” she said. “Bill Maher said once that if 8 year olds can decide what they want to be when they grow up, the world would be full of pirates and princesses.”