MEDIA RSVP TO [email protected]
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Spooky Nook LANCO
75 Champ Blvd
Manheim, PA 17545
Friday, May 31
11:00 a.m. ET
__________________________________________________________________
LANCASTER, PA — During the U.S. Women’s Open, which runs May 30-June 2 at the Lancaster Country Club, the Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition, featuring female athletes, coaches, and women’s advocates, will host a press conference to protest Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and United States Golf Association (USGA) rules allowing male competitors in the women’s category. The event is part of the landmark Take Back Title IX Summer 2024 Bus Tour across America which is calling attention to the devastating impact the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations will have on women and girls and building upon the nationwide movement to save women’s sports.
After securing a first alternate spot, Hailey Davidson, a male golfer who identifies as a female, has a chance to compete for the U.S. Women’s Open in Lancaster. Professional golfer Lauren Miller lost a first-place title at the 2024 NXXT Women’s Championship to Davidson earlier this year, after which NXXT Golf implemented a new pro-woman, pro-fairness participation policy which requires all eligible players to be a biological female at birth.
Speakers at the press conference are standing up for women and demanding the LPGA and USGA stop discriminating against female athletes and establish rules to distinguish the sexes to give women golf pros a fair chance on the course. There is no equity, fairness, sportsmanship, or opportunity for women to succeed at an elite level without sex-based categories.
EVENT DETAILS:
WHAT: Our Bodies, Our Sports Summer 2024 Bus Tour U.S. Women’s Open Press Conference in Lancaster, PA
WHY: Our Bodies, Our Sports is hitting the road from coast to coast this summer, including Lancaster, Pennsylvania, activating supporters across the country to save women’s sports.
The Lancaster press conference will support top female golfers and advocate to keep ladies’ golf female.
WHO: The Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition formed in 2022 to defend women’s sports and the integrity of the female sporting category. Our Bodies, Our Sports is the nation’s first and only coalition of women’s advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum fighting for equal opportunity and fairness in women’s sports.
SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE:
- Riley Gaines, 12x All American swimmer, 5x SEC Champion and record holder, Independent Women’s Forum ambassador, and host of “Gaines for Girls” on OutKick
- Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador
- Selina Soule, 4x National Qualifier sprinter and Alliance Defending Freedom client
- Coach Kim Russell, former Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador
- Payton McNabb, former high school volleyball player and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador
- Kara Dansky, president of Women’s Declaration International USA
- Coach Barbara Ehardt, former 15-year career NCAA Division I women’s basketball coach; former NCAA basketball player; and current member of the Idaho House of Representatives from the 33rd district
- Macy Petty, NCAA volleyball player and Young Women for America Ambassador
- Lily Williams, student athlete from Lancaster County, participated against male athlete
**Mult-box will be provided.**
**There will be media Q&A and opportunities for pull asides.**
Please direct all RSVPs and media inquiries to [email protected].
BACKGROUND:
TAKE BACK TITLE IX SUMMER 2024 BUS TOUR
From Lancaster, the tour will travel coast to coast throughout the month of June holding events in cities across the nation. The tour bus will appear in Oklahoma, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Washington D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin, and Maryland.
The tour builds on the momentum the Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition has built over the past two years standing up for women and girls — creating the largest, most ideologically diverse women’s movement of our time.
The Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition formed in 2022 to defend women’s sports and the integrity of the female sporting category. Despite political and ideological differences, members of the coalition stand together with gratitude for the generations of female athletes who came before us and in defense of all the women and girls who will come next.
Coalition members include Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Champion Women, Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, International Consortium on Female Sports (ICFS), Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), the US chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA), Concerned Women for America (CWA), Young Women for America, Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC), and Independent Women’s Network (IWN).
Our Bodies, Our Sports believes that taking opportunities from women and giving them to men doesn’t enforce Title IX, it violates it. That was true before the Biden administration dropped its new Title IX rule, and it is still true today.
On the 52nd anniversary of Title IX (Sunday, June 23, 2024), the “Take Back Title IX” tour will roll into Washington, D.C. and will hold a press conference near the White House, followed by a rally event to commemorate the final annual celebration of the landmark sex equality law before the Biden administration’s unlawful rewrite upends Title IX as we have always known it. The new regulations strip away all sex-based protections in education, undermine women’s rights, and require schools to allow males to self-identify into women’s spaces, opportunities, and athletics.
The final stretch of the tour takes place during National Women’s Sports Week, initiated by Independent Women’s Forum in 2022 and observed annually during the week of June 23. In recognition of Women’s Sports Week, June 23-June 29, the tour is planning two special events featuring music performances in Washington, DC and Nashville, TN to celebrate female athletes – past, present, and future – for their athletic participation and achievement in sport.
Click HERE to see upcoming stops on the tour.