Tag: sports

Court Overturns West Virginia Transgender Sports Ban

A federal appeals court has blocked a West Virginia law that banned students from participating in single-sex sports teams that don’t match their biological sex.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order and opinion on April 16 that blocks enforcement of the Save Women’s Sports Bill on grounds that the law violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiff, a 13-year-old eighth-grade track athlete who was born male but identifies as female.

The measure was signed into law by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice in 2021. It was quickly challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the lawsuit on behalf of Becky Pepper-Jackson, the transgender student who was prevented from joining the girls’ cross-country team.

The ACLU argued that Becky Pepper-Jackson (referred to in court filings by the initials B.P.J.), who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2019 and was treated with puberty blockers followed by “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, never underwent male puberty and so doesn’t have any athletic advantage over naturally-born girls.

The group claimed that the West Virginia law discriminated against children like B.P.J. “on the basis of sex and transgender status” in violation of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, including the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits a state from denying a person within its jurisdiction “equal protection of the laws.”

Keep reading

Major League Baseball’s biometric ticketing collects 6K opening day hits

Fans entered a stadium with biometrics during the opening day of the 2024 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, one of four ballparks to deploy the technology, and the league has high hopes for the touchless access program.

The Washington Nationals added biometric ticketing to their opening day lineup through MLB’s Go-Ahead Entry. The introduction of Go-Ahead Entry allows fans attending Nationals games to use the MLB Ballpark app for touchless entry at gates equipped with dedicated hardware.

Fans using the optional service register their biometrics with a selfie and then use facial authentication to enter at full walking speed through dedicated gates. Four lanes have been deployed at Nationals Park in D.C. Two of those are on the west end of the Park’s center field gates, another in center field, and one more on the first-base side of the stadium.

The rollout in Washington follows trials last year at Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia last year. Those trials showed the biometric lines moving 68 percent faster, and 2.5 times more people passing through them than the fastest lane using physical or smartphone-based tickets, reports the Fredericksburg Free Press. The Phillies have taken their deployment stadium-wide for the 2024 season.

Prior to that, face biometrics were used for entry to New York Mets games with Wicket technology, and to Cleveland Guardians games with Clear’s technology.

The facial recognition technology for MLB’s Go-Ahead Entry was developed by NEC, according to an April 1 ESPN report.

Keep reading

Democrats Claim Men ‘Don’t Compete in Women’s Sports’ as Stolen Athletic Titles Near 300

Does Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., really live in New York or an alternate universe?

People certainly wondered after a House Judiciary Committee hearing where the 76-year-old declared, “Men do not compete in women’s sports.” Is the president’s senility contagious or is Nadler living in complete denial of a global phenomenon that’s plunged communities into chaos?

Not only are men competing in women’s sports, they’re winning women’s titles—a fact Riley Gaines was more than happy to point out.

“Ironic he says this on the EXACT two-year anniversary of this photo being taken,” Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer, posted alongside a picture of Lia Thomas holding a trophy he never should have had the chance to race for. “This 6’4” man isn’t fooling anyone with any amount of common sense,” Gaines fumed. “2 years ago today, I had a fire lit under me and communists like Nadler continue to fuel it.”

And yet, Nadler was so determined to suppress reality that he actually moved to have evidence of the debate stricken from the record. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., had catalogued a number of times that biological boys had stolen girls’ titles and opportunities in the past several years.

The group SheWon puts the number at an eye-popping 292 stolen first-place podiums. “I ask for unanimous consent to submit for the record instances of men hijacking women’s sports and the various examples that we have demonstrating not only injuries that have been suffered by women as men have participated in girls sports, but also the women—the girls and women who have been affected by this, including Riley Gaines, when Will Thomas decided to join the … women’s swimming team in Pennsylvania,” Hageman requested.

Keep reading

Taxpayers Will Soon Find Out if They’ll Have To Finance Fancy Stadiums for the Chiefs and the Royals

Professional sports team owners are at it again. This time, it’s the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals who want fans—along with their fellow taxpayers who may be indifferent toward sports—to help with their business expenditures. Early voting has already begun as Jackson County prepares to decide whether to partially fund the teams’ stadium plans or potentially lose the teams to another city.

The Chiefs proposed $800 million in renovations to the GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, of which the owners will only pay $300 million. The Royals, meanwhile, announced in February plans for a brand new stadium estimated to cost $2 billion, only half of which is expected to be paid by the Royals in private funds.

The vote, which will conclude April 2, either will have residents opt to get rid of an existing sales tax that pays a portion of stadium operation fees or replace it with a new one—totaling approximately $2 billion and scheduled for over the course of 40 years—in order to pay a portion of the price. Each team would receive $27 million of tax money annually.

So what will happen if voters reject it? “We’d have to look at all our options,” said Mark Donovan, the president of the Chiefs. “I think they’d have to include leaving Kansas City.” His appeal may very well sway voters, considering there is a long history of these threats working in the city.

The Royals echoed Donovan’s thought: “There’s lots of cities that would love to have these franchises,” said John Sherman, the majority owner of the Royals. And the Committee to Keep the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County noted that “if the vote doesn’t pass, both teams will consider all options.”

But even though they insist these taxes are necessary, it’s difficult not to see their threats as a way to scare voters into coughing up taxpayer dollars so both teams can save private funds. Leaked documents indicate that taxpayers could end up paying up to $5.1 billion over four decades—far more than the teams’ estimate.

The sports giants are in fact so keen to save every penny that a $1 million request by Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. to pay for the elections, in order to avoid taking funds from the city’s emergency reserve, has so far gone ignored by the teams. The initiative “poses a significant dilemma,” said White, “given our commitment to safeguarding the county’s financial stability.”

It’s worth noting that the Hunt family, who owns the Chiefs and whose fortune stems from oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, is worth nearly $25 billion, according to Forbes. Putting aside the questionable ethics of weaponizing local sports enthusiasm to save private funds, there is no clear reason why the owners can’t pay for the renovations themselves.

Keep reading

Joe Biden Thinks He Can Rewrite the Constitution After Urging Congress to Ban “Assault Weapons” in Wake of Chiefs Super Bowl Parade Shooting

In a recent statement following a devastating shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, President Joe Biden has called on Congress to enact stricter gun control measures.

Kansas City was struck by violence on Wednesday when a shooter opened fire amidst the festivities, resulting in at least 29 individuals receiving medical attention.

Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves confirmed 22 people were shot, with one succumbing to her injuries. Hospitals told CNN that 19 of the 29 patients are being treated for gunshot wounds.

Three individuals have been detained in relation to the shooting incident.

Joe Biden quickly seized the opportunity to politicize the tragic event.

In a statement, Biden urged Congress to ban “assault weapons, to limit high-capacity magazines, strengthen background checks, keep guns out of the hands of those who have no business owning them or handling them.”

Keep reading

It’s Time to Retire Super Bowl ‘Sex Trafficking’ Stings and Myths

Super Bowl LVIII is fast approaching. For many Americans, that will mean gathering with friends to watch the game, enjoy some sort of dip-based snacks, and gripe about the halftime show. But for sex workers and those who would like to patronize them, it will mean a higher chance of getting nabbed by cops.

Under the guise of “stopping sex trafficking,” authorities tend to ramp up prostitution stings around Super Bowl time. The ostensible motive behind this is that large sporting events like the Super Bowl draw an influx of traffickers and their victims to the locales hosting these events.

Yet no one has managed to marshal evidence of these hordes of traffickers allegedly descending on Super Bowl cities. The best authorities can do is sometimes point to a spike in Super Bowl weekend arrests of sex workers and their customers—a spike easily explained by the fact that cops are making a concerted effort to catch people offering to sell or pay for sex.

Keep reading

LVMPD plans ‘tunnel sweeps’ of homeless people as part of Super Bowl security

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department tells FOX5 it will begin clearing homeless people from drainage tunnels next week for the Super Bowl.

But one homeless advocacy group says tunnels have already been thinned out.

“Since F1, the talk about the A’s coming here, the stadium, all the presence downtown, there’s definitely been more of a presence in trying to clear out the tunnels around the Strip, and to keep it cleared out, more so than in the past,” said Shine A Light Outreach Director Robert Banghart.

In fact, Banghart tells FOX5 there may already be 70% fewer people in tunnels near the Strip. He says around 30-40 people were living in a tunnel near the Rio but says right now, there may be only three or four people there.

“On the route I usually do, it seems in the underground tunnels around the Strip it’s down to bare minimum,” he said.

Shine A Light goes into drainage tunnels to provide emotional support, supplies and even an immediate way out of tunnel life if people choose. The group will get people into detox right away and work to place them into sober living and eventually into independent living.

“We’ll engage them in our IPATH program, which will be 18 months if they so choose. And every step of the way, we’re going to walk them through all the different levels of care,” said Banghart.

Keep reading

UFC Warns Fighters To Stop Using Marijuana ‘Immediately’ So They Aren’t Punished Under California Athletics Rules

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) might have removed marijuana from its banned substances list for professional fighters—but a California athletics commission says they could still face penalties under state rules for testing positive for THC over a certain limit ahead of an upcoming event.

UFC, which formally amended its cannabis drug testing policy last month, reportedly advised fighters that they could be subject to a $100 fine by the California State Athletic Commission if they test over 150 nanograms of THC per milliliter ahead of the UFC 298 event that is set to take place on February 17 in Anaheim.

An email from UFC that was obtained by the trade publication MMA Fighting cautioned fighters to “discontinue use immediately to ensure you don’t exceed” the THC threshold.

The policy from the California commission, which falls under the state Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), might seem misplaced in light of UFC’s own recent reform, as well as the fact that marijuana is legal for adults in California.

Marijuana Moment reached out to DCA for comment, but a representative was not immediately available.

UFC itself said last month that while it models its list of prohibited drugs after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—which has controversially maintained cannabis as a banned substance—it decided to make amendments “based on historical findings (i.e. marijuana removed from the prohibited list).”

Professional fighters were already largely protected from being penalized over testing positive for THC under a policy change that UFC adopted in 2021, but it has since removed cannabis as a banned drug altogether. The reform took effect on December 31, 2023.

Multiple sports organizations have moved to amend their marijuana testing policies for athletes amid the state legalization movement.

Keep reading

Why is a full-grown man competing against teenage girls in swimming?

First they let men compete in women’s sports. Now they’re letting adult men compete against teenage girls – and wander into their changing rooms.

As hard as it might be to believe, in Canada a 50-year-old man really is being allowed to compete in swimming competitions alongside 13- and 14-year-old girls. Melody Wiseheart, formerly Nicholas Cepeda, is a professor of psychology and behavioural science at York University in Toronto, specialising in children and young people.

Concerned parents tipped off Rebel News, a right-wing website, about Wiseheart in October last year. He was spotted swimming in a competition at the Markham Pan Am recreation centre, representing the Orangeville Otters swimming club.

The next week, to try to stand up the story, Rebel News reporter Davide Menzies confronted several staff members at the recreation centre. Its competition coordinator initially said he could not recall seeing ‘a 50-year-old man’ competing alongside teenage girls. Menzies then presented him with the competition schedule, which showed Wiseheart’s name and age alongside those of nine teenage girls. Only then did the coordinator admit that Wiseheart had indeed been allowed to take part. The Daily Mail alleges that Wiseheart has been competing against teenage girls since 2019.

According to the competition coordinator, Wiseheart has the right to compete in girls’ competitions under Swimming Canada’s ‘trans inclusion’ rules. He has registered himself as female and is thus treated as female. And although the competitions he swims in consist almost exclusively of teenage girls, this is simply a matter of convention. It seems that, since no adult had ever tried to enter a teenagers’ race before, there had been no need to draw up explicit rules. In other words, Wiseheart did not even need to ‘identify’ as a 13-year-old girl to assert his ‘right’ to enter the girls’ competition.

Keep reading

Mystery Deepens Around NFL Fans Found Frozen in Friend’s Backyard as Fifth Man Is Identified

A new name has arisen in the case of three Kansas City Chiefs fans who died earlier this month.

Alex Weamer-Lee, a friend of the victims, had joined them for a watch party, according to the Daily Mail. That makes five people who attended the event, three of whom later died.

According to the New York Post, Andrew Talge, Weamer-Lee’s attorney, his client was at the party on Jan. 7 that ended up in death, but left at about midnight, and said that when he left the four other men at the party were watching “Jeopardy!”

This is how the case unfolded. On Jan. 7, David Harrington, 37, Ricky Johnson, 38, and Clayton McGeeney, 36, visited Jordan Willis’ home in the northen part of Kansas City to watch a game between the Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers, WDAF-TV reported.

On the night of Jan. 9, the men were all found dead on Willis’ property by the Kansas City Police Department. One of the men was dead on the back porch, while the other two were found in the backyard, WDAF reported.

Police said at the time that there were no obvious signs of foul play, and a member of one of the dead men’s families said Willis had claimed they “froze to death.”

Willis reportedly said his friends were at his home as he had gone to bed and had invited them to stay over as long as they wished, the outlet reported. However, an attorney for Willis first said his client watched his friends leave and then later said his client was asleep while the men continued to party at the house.

He said he spent the following two days with “no knowledge” that his friends were dead on his property, according to the New York Post.

Keep reading