For Carter Satterfield and Juliana Morrow, swimming isn’t just a sport; it’s a way of life.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Carter Satterfield: I wanted a place where I could work to be the best me, and for me, that’s in the pool.

Juliana Morrow: I started my freshman year of high school. Going to college and swimming is definitely way more intense, but I’m so used to it, and it’s everything to me.

Recruited to swim for Roanoke College, an NCAA Division III school in Virginia, these juniors nearly lost their dream of excelling as competitive racers. Last year, a former member of the men’s team tried to switch to the women’s team after taking a year off for hormone therapy.

Carter Satterfield: We all agreed that we were willing to not swim if it came down to it, if this athlete was going to be allowed to swim. It is completely unfair to compete against a biological male who had competed very well on our men’s team and now wants to join the women’s team.

With that motivation, last October, the team held a press conference.

Lily Mullins: I am calling on the NCAA and lawmakers everywhere to stop the suffering and emotional turmoil that is being placed on girls. My name is Lily Mullins, a captain of the Roanoke College swim team, and I stand with female athletes everywhere. Thank you.

Satterfield and Morrow, however, are taking it a step further.

They’ve joined other current and former college athletes in a lawsuit over what they say is a violation of their Title IX rights, a federal law that protects women’s athletics and other activities that receive federal tax money.

Carter Satterfield: Riley Gaines is the lead plaintiff, and there are 17, and counting, female athletes joining the lawsuit to sue the NCAA for breaking their promise to us and not creating fair and safe sports.

Riley Gaines entered the debate as a college swimmer who competed against Lia Thomas, formerly William Thomas. Thomas swam on the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania before switching to the women’s team in 2020, shattering women’s records. In a 2022 national championship race, Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth place, but the award was given to Thomas.

Riley Gaines: Unfortunately, it takes negative circumstances—people being adversely affected, losing out on opportunities, being exploited in locker rooms, being injured in their sports—before people start to care.

Now, Gaines, Satterfield, and Morrow are part of a group suing the NCAA to bar transgender athletes who are men from competing in women’s college sports and to revoke records and awards won by men in women’s competitions.

Over the summer, Gaines traveled the U.S. on a bus tour with prominent women, including tennis great Martina Navratilova and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. They rallied others against a controversial change by the Biden administration that rewrote Title IX to include gender identity under protections intended for women.

Riley Gaines: Meaning sex-based protections and sex-based rights have been entirely eliminated.

Twenty-six Republican Attorneys General are challenging that rewrite of Title IX in the lower courts, and judges have agreed to temporarily ban the new regulations in those states.

Ginny Gentles: We were fortunate to grow up in a time when women’s rights and spaces were protected.

Ginny Gentles is with the Independent Women’s Forum, a nonprofit that informs women about the impact of policy issues and is suing the Biden administration to keep men out of women’s sports.

Ginny Gentles: What the Biden administration has done is offer a rewrite through regulations. It didn’t do this through Congress; it did this through a regulatory process, taking a 37-word law that protects women and protects individuals against discrimination in education and creating a 1,600-page regulation that throws everything on its head.

Lisa Fletcher: How did this go off the rails?

Ginny Gentles: A big part of it is the rapid growth and embrace among the left of gender ideology. This idea that we can move away from the longstanding understanding that sex is binary—male or female, woman or man—and that we should elevate the rights of people who describe themselves as a sex or a gender that’s not their biological one.

It’s been a national debate since at least 2019 when CeCe Telfer, raised as Craig Telfer, became the first transgender individual to win a women’s NCAA track and field championship.

Advocating for opportunities like that is Karleigh Webb, a journalist with Outsports who covers LGBTQ+ issues. Webb identifies as female and has lived the debate over people born male playing on women’s teams.

Lisa Fletcher: They say there’s an unfair advantage.

Karleigh Webb: People who say that are speaking from their transphobia, not from the facts.

When we met last year, Webb had just scored a touchdown on an all-women’s tackle football team.

Lisa Fletcher: Is there a physical gap, though, between women and trans women in terms of just your strength and your ability?

Karleigh Webb: You can’t say that definitively, because everybody is different, and every body is different. When you line up 20 people, for example, look at a team picture of the team I play for. There are many different body types across the spectrum.

Carter Satterfield: When we can’t decide on a definition of what a woman is, or we can’t talk about biological men and women without being screamed at for being haters or transphobic, it’s really hard.

Satterfield and her teammates are holding steadfast to their position that women’s sports should be for women only.

The transgender swimmer they spoke against left the women’s team, but they say the battle isn’t over—they’re still fighting to be protected in athletics for who they are.

Juliana Morrow: I don’t want anyone else to go through what we’ve been through, and if there’s a way that we can protect them by doing this, I would love to be able to help the best that I can.

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