A weekend op-ed in the Wall Street Journal raised a warning flag about the so-called “Protect College Sports Act (PCSA).” One-time Stanford tennis All-American Kim Jones is of the opinion the bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that would neuter Title IX.

Jones’ editorial argues that the NCAA is promoting the proposed legislation as a fix for problems such as chaos in college football, conference realignment and name-image-and-likeness (NIL) payments to athletes. In reality, the author contends, the bill is a “Trojan horse” that would shield the NCAA from liability for policies allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports.

Jones believes the NCAA has already violated Title IX by permitting male athletes such as Lia (formerly William) Thomas, CeCé Telfer, Blaire Fleming, Sadie Schreiner and others to win women’s titles and awards, join women’s teams and access women’s locker rooms.

Jones’ organization, the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which she co-founded, is financially supporting three federal lawsuits (filed in 2024 and 2025) against the NCAA, its conferences and member schools on behalf of dozens of female athletes — including Riley Gaines and Brooke Slusser — as well as female Olympians and American record holders.

The core claim is that the PCSA would shield the NCAA from liability for forcing women to compete against men, thereby undermining Title IX’s sex-based protections in college athletics. Specifically, she writes, the overly broad exemption would short-circuit the ongoing lawsuits and halt efforts to hold the NCAA accountable under Title IX.

Some key assertions made by Jones:

• By exempting all NCAA eligibility decisions, the bill would shield the NCAA from liability for past and future eligibility decisions that violate Title IX.
• The association’s lobbyists have slipped into the PCSA an overly broad exemption from federal law, authorizing the NCAA to harm countless female college athletes — past, current and future. The PCSA exemption would gut the impact of Title IX in women’s college sports, even erasing the need for the NCAA to continue to adhere to President Trump’s executive order, which prompted the NCAA to modify its eligibility policy for men in women’s sports.
• The bill would undo aspects of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J., which upheld state protections for women and girls in school sports, including college sports. The PCSA would exempt the NCAA from accountability under state laws in 27 states, and from measures on the ballot in several others which address eligibility for women’s sports teams in college. These state laws became necessary because the NCAA and its member institutions were violating Title IX.
• Even today, the NCAA permits member schools to allow men on women’s teams, and the association’s revised policy allows men to define themselves as women and use women’s locker rooms.

Jones points out that more than 80% of the public believes men shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. With that broad consensus in mind, it’s hard to see how those trying to steer the bill through Congress can effectively debate on behalf of its merits if the legislation’s harmful impacts as alleged by Jones are not properly clarified or otherwise dealt with in the final draft.

The NCAA has a track record for treating female athletes as pawns in the political maneuvering that swirls around so-called transgender politics. For that reason alone, it would be advisable for Washington politicians to take Ms. Jones’ op-ed seriously enough to read the fine print before making the bill the law of the land.

Click here to read Jones’ full editorial.