During an interview with Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul on Tuesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) talked about the state’s lawsuit over the Trump administration’s attempts to keep biological men from competing in women’s sports and responded to a question on the fairness of letting biological men play women’s sports by stating that he knows of children “who are 10, 9, 11, and they don’t really care about winning, they just want to be on the team.”
Host Amy Hockert asked a question from a parent that said, “[A] biological male recently took first place in the girls’ triple jump and is now in the school records for three girls’ events. No one wants to see kids bullied or denied opportunities, but is it fair to the girls who have trained hard, only to lose out to athletes with clear biological advantages, from their perspective, couldn’t this be considered a form of bullying?”
Ellison responded, “I’m at a disadvantage, because that particular case I’m not aware of. I do know of other children in that school district who are 10, 9, 11, and they don’t really care about winning, they just want to be on the team. We’re talking about kids who have always identified as female, never have identified any other way, and they just want to be on the team and because they want to run and jump like all kids do. And so, the caller called in on that situation. I’ll study that one, but the situation I do know about is a child who probably isn’t going to win the race, but maybe they will, who knows? But they’re not there for the purpose of trophies and medals. They’re there just because they want to be a member of the team and learn something about sportsmanship and teamwork and cooperation and — which are really the real lessons of sports.”
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