Foul Balls

How girls' sports in Minnesota is rigged against them

Male pitcher Marissa (Charlie) Rothenberger just fired back-to-back shutout games, 14 shutout innings, holding last year’s state championship team scoreless and leading his team to the Minnesota Section AAAA Softball Championship, and their first trip to the state tournament. Reminder: softball is one of the sports created by Title IX specifically to expand opportunities for girls.

Yet Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison claimed “the Minnesota Human Rights Act prohibits schools from protecting girls’ sports by designating a female category, and athletes must be allowed to compete in sports based on gender identity.” You read that right—because gender identity was slipped into the Human Rights Act back in 1993, it is unlawful in Minnesota to have female-only sports. In Minnesota, some humans have rights and some do not.

Three softball players who have faced the male player for the past two years are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more. They’ve joined Female Athletes United in a federal lawsuit against Attorney General Ellison, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL), and others, seeking to remove males from girls’ sports and restore their Title IX rights.

Obviously, males in female sports is wrong—the vast majority of Americans agree on that. So, how did we get to this point in the first place? Why does it keep happening? And why is it so hard to undo?

Let’s look at some of the players in this extra-inning humiliation of girls and girls’ sports.

First, please read Professor of Exercise Science Greg Brown’s expert testimony on softball-specific sex differences.

Prepubertal boys run faster, jump farther, and display much more upper-body strength than similar-aged girls. These differences are stark in areas relevant to softball. For example, boys have substantial advantages in throwing velocity and distance—even as young as four years old—which is critical to pitching and fielding. Likewise in acceleration and change-of-direction, which are critical to baserunning, and upper-body strength, which is critical to batting.

Even when males undergo testosterone suppression to reach female levels, they retain most of the puberty-related advantages of muscle mass and strength seen in …males….Males who identify as females “remain fully male-bodied in the respects that matter for sport,” so “their inclusion effectively de-segregates the [girls’] teams and events they join.” That “significantly undermine[s] the benefits afforded to female student athletes.”

Nor is there evidence that puberty blockers eliminate the pre-existing prepubertal male advantage. To the contrary, puberty-blocked males still achieve the same or nearly the same male height predicted at birth. This means they are taller and have longer limbs than typical females, which provides an advantage in most sports, including softball. And they retain advantages in lean body mass, body fat, and handgrip strength, the latter of which is a well accepted proxy for overall strength.

This gives them both the benefits of being taller and also of having longer limbs. Nor is there evidence that puberty blockers eliminate all other aspects of male advantage, including advantages that predate puberty. These differences are central to softball performance. In pitching, male advantage manifests through throwing faster and farther. Greater wingspan and larger hands provide advantages for grip, potentially giving increased control in putting spin on the ball.

Males also have an advantage in hitting and running—they can hit harder and run faster. Males exhibit great speed, distance, and accuracy in throwing early on.

Now listen to the announcers gush about the 6-foot male player’s huge wingspan, and what an advantage that is in pitching what turned out to be a shutout game, playing what should be an all-girls sport. Brown’s data on sex differences playing out in real time.

All those sex-based advantages boys have? The Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA), and all the Minnesota laws and high school bylaws that allow sports participation by gender identity do not care about them. The MHRA does not take safety or fairness for girls into account. An amicus brief in the Jaycee Cooper powerlifting (powerlifting!) case stated that considerations of “fairness or [males’] competitive advantage” are irrelevant. By disregarding the reality of male advantage, the MHRA prioritizes males at the expense of females, and gender identity over sex. (But if males and females were truly of equal physical ability, you wouldn’t need a female category, and then what category would boys with girl identities identify into?) And wala, Minnesota legal logic!

It’s of particular note that these girls are the first, in a state that touts its progressive social justice cred, to point out that women, too, deserve social justice. In the hierarchy of marginalized demographics, females rarely warrant a mention, maybe because poverty among women, violence against women, and yes, discrimination against women has been going on so long, it’s accepted as the norm. Since Minnesota has been allowing boys in girls’ sports since 2015, today’s high school girls have been raised on the message of “inclusion,” which is male inclusion in women’s spaces, and that it’s “mean” to stand up for girls-only anything.

The three softball players joined Female Athletes United, a nonprofit that advocates for the protection of female athletics, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, which, as mainstream media never tires of pointing out, is best known for its part in overturning Roe v. Wade. With that, and descriptors like “conservative” and “Christian,” the girls may as well have chosen the living devil for their defense. Yes, this is yet another example of activism identifying as journalism, but for the love of Job, you can’t throw a stone without hitting a lawyer. Would it be too much to ask to find a reputable bunch of suits situated somewhere between ADF and the ACLU willing to represent women?

The Girls

Identified in the legal documents by their initials, the girls are some of the top players in the state, accustomed to competing against elite female players. They all say they’ve never faced a player with Rothenberger’s speed and strength. Because they’ve never faced a male player.

One girl, a junior, has played against the male player for two years. Last year, her team lost to the male player’s team, Champlin Park, during sectionals, so did not move on to the state tournament. This year during the regular season, her team lost to the male player’s team 0-2. The male player pitched the entire game, including seven strikeouts.

Another of the girls, also a junior, played against the male athlete last year and this year, and likely again next year. In the pre-season this year, she saw the male player whack a home run so hard it hit the far side of the dome in which they played, something she’d never seen a girl do. This girl pitched on the same traveling club team as the male player last summer. When she found out she’d have to compete with the male player for playing time, she quit the club.

The third girl, a sophomore, was hit by a pitch from the male player this season. She, like her co-plaintiffs, feels it’s unsafe and unfair for a boy to be allowed to play in girls’ sports.

The girls describe how they have lost opportunities, awards, and recognition meant for female athletes to a male. As intended by Title IX.

The Male Player

Reduxx first published an article on Rothenberger earlier this spring. That story indicated Rothenberger had been playing girls’ sports from an early age, and his mother had his birth certificate changed to Female just after his ninth birthday. Since Minnesota can issue a new birth certificate rather than an amended one, it might appear as if the sex marker is the one observed at birth, so there is a possibility that school officials did not know Rothenberger’s sex. Regardless, privacy policies would have prevented them from informing any of the girls on Rothenberger’s team (with whom he shares a locker room) or any of the opposing teams that he is male.

As a sophomore, he was a starting pitcher on Champlin Park’s varsity team and played elite-level club softball with Midwest Speed, where he earned Player of the Month in July of 2024. Last season with Champlin Park, Rothenberger was awarded First-Team All-State honors, an award usually bestowed on a junior or senior, and, of course, meant for a girl. A poster child for Brown’s analysis of sex differences in softball performance, Rothenberger shot up over the summer, as teenage boys are wont to do, even if they are on puberty blockers, and with this sudden increase in height and arm length, came an attendant surge in pitching and hitting ability. Last season, Champlin Park, ended the year second in the section with a stellar 21-4 record. This year, led by Rothenberger’s next-level (read: male) pitching and hitting, they have a good shot at the state championship. He has mentioned that his goal is to play D1 softball. (Apparently, the NCAA is trying to close the loophole of “birth certificate sex,” but have not proposed a means of doing that)

Girls’ Softball, Boys’ Baseball

Way back in 1979, when we knew what boy and girl meant, Dr. Bernice Sandler, a women’s rights activist who was instrumental in the creation of Title IX, said: “Girls softball and boys baseball are separate sports because girls are at a ‘substantial physical disadvantage’ and even ‘isolated instances of male participation upon girls’ teams creat[es] an advantage for those teams.’ So ‘athletics programs necessarily allocate [such] opportunities separately for male and female students.’”

Softball and baseball are both competitive sports in which players are selected based on their strength, speed, endurance, and skill. Female athletes may match male athletes’ skill, but because of physiological differences, they can’t match male athletes’ strength, speed, or endurance. Furthermore, a spot on the varsity roster and playing time are zero-sum games—18 players per team; nine on the field at a time; one pitcher at a time. The disadvantage to girls caused by even one male in what is supposed to be a girls’ sport multiplies quickly—a roster spot, minutes of playing time, games played, awards, tournament advancement, postseason play, college scholarships.

The Minnesota State High School League’s Policy

Approved in 2014, and put in place in 2015, the MSHSL allows transgender students to compete in sports, and use locker rooms and restrooms, consistent with their gender identity.

As an aside, I was both coaching at the middle/high school level and writing about this topic in 2015, and I heard NOTHING about it. No vote, no discussion, no debate. And I’m certain that was on purpose. If I did not know women’s rights were being quietly given away, you can be sure others didn’t. In fact, now, ten years on, the vast majority of Minnesotans do not realize that women and girls’ Title IX rights have been sacrificed long ago on the alter of gender ideology.

By allowing sports participation by gender identity, the Minnesota State High School League keeps baseball an effectively all-boys sport, but erases softball as an all-girls sport. Very few, if any, girls will qualify for boys’ varsity baseball, so that option is effectively closed to them, but boys have more options—they can participate in both baseball and softball, causing softball, originally designed to be a girls’ sport, to be a mixed-sex sport. Boys have two sports, girls have none that are girls-only. Again, this is the exact opposite of the intent of Title IX, which sought to expand opportunities for women and girls by providing sex-segregated sports.

There is no requirement for a male student to use puberty blockers, suppress testosterone, take cross-sex hormones, or have surgery, which as Professor Brown mentioned, do not eliminate male advantage anyway. So, boys, age 14 through 18, playing on girls’ teams, are unadulteratedly male, regardless of their gender identity.

Here’s a niblet: thinking they are really covering all their bases (ha) from trans imposters (so, a boy who is pretending to identify as a girl), the MSHSL can deny a male’s request to compete on a girls’ team. But that boy can appeal, and prove he’s really a trans girl through “dress or manner.” Which is not insulting to girls at all. There is no process by which a girl can lodge a complaint about having a boy on her team or in her sport. She has to file a lawsuit.

What The Heck Is Going On With Minnesota Law?

All of the entities named in the lawsuit point to the MHRA as giving them permission to ignore sex differences between males and females (which is at the heart of Title IX), and allow males into female sports. That’s their North Star, so to speak.

The Minnesota Human Rights Act, you will not be surprised to learn, started out in 1973 to protect women’s rights at a time when women could be fired for being married, pregnant, or lesbian, and was later broadened to include race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, public assistance status, age, disability, and in 1993, sexual orientation. Sexual orientation was understood to include gender identity, which is why so many people, in Minnesota and elsewhere, think of gender identity as gays rights 2.0. And of course, it was never clearly explained, or understood, how women’s rights would work with the rights of men who identified as women. As it turns out, not well.

In 2015, the State High School League applied the MHRA’s nondiscrimination based on gender identity to sports (and locker rooms), but the MHRA doesn’t take into account male advantage in sports. So the very nice-sounding Minnesota Human Rights Act prioritizes the rights of males with girl identities at the expense of females, who are also humans. Throwing gender identity into the mix sacrificed fairness and safety for women and girls, which is the opposite of what Title IX was meant to do. But nothing untoward happened in those ten intervening years—either the male athletes who competed on female teams were not talented enough to draw attention, or girls had learned to be kind and not expect girls-only anything, or some combination thereof.

Fast forward to 2025, and the MSHSL released a statement saying they couldn’t follow Trump’s Executive Order to Keep Men Out of Women’s Sports because it would violate the MHRA. They “requested a legal opinion,” i.e. begged Attorney General Keith Ellison to back them up. Which he obliged. And so on around the circle that included the Commissioner of the Department of Human Rights, the Commissioner of Education, and several school districts, and yup, they all said they had to abide by the MHRA. Because human rights. Somehow, Minnesota lost sight of some salient facts—that women are also humans due human rights, some of which are enshrined in Title IX, a federal law that supercedes state law.

The Lawsuit

Word from Suzanne Beecher, attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom: When you sign on to Title IX, which Minnesota schools have, you’re saying you’re going to abide by the Title IX requirements. Which include sex-segregated sports for girls.

ADF first sought an injunction to keep Rothenberger from playing high school softball. The court set a date for that hearing of July 7th, so it’s too late to affect this season.

But, Beecher said, the lawsuit also challenges the MSHSL policy of allowing males in female sports, which if ADF prevailed, could restore single-sex sports for all women and girls in Minnesota.

A win by ADF would likely be based on the argument that biological differences between males and females create unfair advantages in sports, and that allowing biological males to compete in girls’ sports violates Title IX’s sex-segregated promise. This would establish a legal precedent within Minnesota (and possibly more broadly), reinforcing the idea that girls' and women's sports must be based on biological sex rather than gender identity.

Yes, the MHRA would still be in effect, but the federal court could carve out protection for girls in sports because of sex differences, or it could say that federal law, Title IX, overrides state law, MHRA, specifically in the area of sports.

As we’ve seen, despite public opinion in their favor, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that shows male advantage, despite a federal law and an Executive Order protecting girls’ sex-based sports, it’s not over til the…body positive person sings.

Gonna be a heckuva double overtime battle, that’s for darn sure.