The Oregon high school that faced scrutiny last year for allowing a transgender athlete to compete in girls’ track events continues to draw attention as its standout runner, Ada Gallagher, remains a force to be reckoned with.

Gallagher, now an 11th-grader at McDaniel High School in Portland, delivered at a recent Portland Interscholastic League meet. Competing in the 400-meter race, Gallagher finished with a time of 57.62 secondsmore than seven seconds ahead of Kinnaly Souphanthong who came in second.

In the 200-meter event, Gallagher also took first place, clocking in at 25.76 seconds, followed by teammate Addyson Skyles at 27.31 seconds. Both times marked season-best records for Gallagher.

Social Media Reactions and Policy Debates

As videos of Gallaghers performances spread across social media, reactions poured in. Some users expressed frustration, with one commenter stating, That experience must be so demoralizing for those girls. Another added, The girls should all just start refusing to run, and it will soon end. Oregons school sports policies allow transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity.

The Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA), which governs high school athletics, has a policy ensuring that students may participate in athletic or activity programs based on their consistently asserted gender identity while maintaining a fair and safe environment for all students.

The controversy surrounding transgender athletes in womens sports has been a national flashpoint, particularly after former President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14201, also known as Keeping Men out of Womens Sports. The order aims to protect female student-athletes in the womens category from having to compete with or against males.

Following Trumps directive, Oregon Republicans have signaled their intent to challenge current policies. House Minority Leader Christine Drazan voiced strong support for legislative changes, stating, Women have fought forand earnedrespect and support for themselves in sports and have made incredible gains in doing so. We must defend that progress and stand up for fairness.

As the debate over transgender participation in high school athletics continues, Gallaghers performances remain at the center of a broader national conversation about competition, fairness, and inclusion in sports.

As per a write up Transgender Women in Womens Sports: Whats Fair? by Robyn E. Blumner: Womens sports are having a moment as viewership for womens sports is growing at a meteoric pace, citing a 103 percent increase in viewers for the 2023 NCAA final basketball game, which drew an audience of nearly 10 million, among other encouraging statistics.

Fifty years after the passage of Title IX, which barred sex discrimination in sports, women made up 44 percent of college athletes according to the NCAA. For generations, women have been working toward this level of participation relative to men. Its something to celebrate.

But an issue has arisen that requires us to look more carefully at something we took for granted: Is it truly necessary to segregate sports by sex? The issue arises because transgender women athletes who have undergone male puberty are seeking to compete with natal women athletes. In the name of transgender rights should this be permitted, or does it inherently undermine the fair playing field that sports demand?

The question is a legitimate one, and people who ask it shouldnt be maligned as transphobes and bigots. For transgender women, its a way to be treated as womenfull stop. For natal women, its a question of fairness. There are incontrovertible biological differences between biological males and females that puts the question of transgender women in sports into the realm of science in addition to public policy.

What we know about the science is that males have a physiological advantage over females in competitions that include speed and strength. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species; it is largely for that reason we segregate sports by sex. Approximately 10,000 male runners have clocked faster times than the current female Olympic champion in the 100-meter race. Tennis star Serena Williams admitted when she was at the top of her game that she couldnt beat any man in the top 100 of the mens tennis circuit.

If we eliminated sex categories for most sports, there would rarely be female winners. For natal women to be able to compete in a way that gives them a fair chance at victories, there have to be sex segregated sports.

The question then becomes whether that advantage can be mitigated through testosterone suppression. That is a matter of scientific inquiry, and the longitudinal biomedical findings to date suggest that the effects of testosterone suppression in male adulthood have very little impact on physiological outcomes such as muscle strength, muscle mass, or lean body mass, according to a paper.

Definitely, that does not mean that every transgender woman athlete will win against all natal women, just as many natal male athletes would lose against better women athletes. The initial reason in sex segregate sports remains valid, to ensure a fair opportunity for women to compete and potentially win championships.

Another argument for granting transgender women the opportunity to compete with natal women is the notion that the number of transgender women athletes is so small that granting them this consideration would not significantly impact womens sports. But that would create a situation where transgender women athletes would be free to compete against natal women unless and until their numbers grow and/or they started winning.

Weve already seen this happen in womens cycling. Reportedly there are now dozens of transgender women competing in womens cycling, and they are starting to take top honors and cash prizesincluding American transgender woman cyclist Austin Killips, who won a womens stage race at the Tour of Gila.

Soon thereafter, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the governing body of cycling, decided in July to ban transgender women who had gone through male puberty from womens competition. They can compete in a men/other category instead. This follows on the heels of a decision in May by British Cycling that banned transgender women from womens competitive events.

The international governing body for swimming, World Aquatics, had once announced that it would establish an open category that would be open to all transgender athletes, thereby giving natal women their own category for competition.

These rule changes are a nod to reality and a recognition that rules for sports need to be clear and universal so aspiring athletes can decide whether they want to invest in training. Top athletes, even those at the collegiate level, spend a huge amount of time working toward peak performance. They need to know ahead of time about their field of competition, to know if they will be truly competitive. That is why all sports where male physicality is an innate advantage need to unambiguously grant natal women athletes their own category. Otherwise, at some point, women are not going to bother.

People can be sympathetic to the argument that transgender women are socially disadvantaged and stigmatized. And the way to combat it is to integrate them into womanhood without differentiating between natal women and transgender women. But I wonder if thats truly the case and if forcing open womens sports to transgender women hasnt exacerbated the problem.

Sophisticated people who care about both science and social fairness need to separate the signal from the noise. These are complicated issues that need to be analyzed to do the least harm possible to the most people. In that calculation, we stand with the natal women athletes who want to compete against each other.