Mass school district permits sports teams to forfeit games “against a team with the opposite sex”
A school committee in Massachusetts, the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School Committee, approved a policy on June 25, 2024, which states that coaches and students will not be “penalized” for forfeiting athletic games “against an opposing team because such team includes athletes of the opposite sex.”
The organization in charge of high school athletics in Massachusetts, the MIAA, has several rules about who can participate in different sports teams. One MIAA rule essentially says that if a school only offers a girls or boys team in a particular sport, then that team needs to be open to all genders. A second rule says that if a school team restricts eligibility based on gender, then “a student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”
These two rules have been in the news recently. Last year, the Dighton-Rehoboth Field Hockey team played a team that had a male player (there is no indication that the male player was transgender). The male player allegedly injured a female Dighton-Rehoboth player. After the injury, the Dighton Rehoboth superintendent went on Fox News and criticized the MIAA policy that allowed the male player to play on the field hockey team.
Earlier this year, a Massachusetts high school basketball team forfeited a game against another team that had a transgender player. The transgender player allegedly caused injuries to two of the high school’s players, a spokesperson for the high school claimed.
According to the minutes of the June 11, 2024 Dighton-Rehoboth School Committee meeting where the new policy was discussed, the Dighton-Rehoboth superintendent, Bill Runey, “expressed his disappointment in the MIAA and absolutely nothing was done.”
The school committee did not appear to discuss transgender athletes during its June 11 and June 25th meetings, according to recordings of both meetings.
The Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative organization that opposes the participation of transgender girls in girls sports, celebrated the passage of the policy in a blog post. In the blog post, they encouraged other Massachusetts school districts to pass similar policies.
“We hope that other Massachusetts school districts will be inspired by Dighton-Rehoboth and implement the same policy,” the blog post read.
New Dighton-Rehoboth Athletic Policy
June 11, 2024 Minutes of the Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School Committee