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Spanberger quietly killed Virginia's girls' sports rule and never told anyone

Photo: U.S. House of Representatives / Public domain (source)

Spanberger Quietly Killed Virginia’s Girls’ Sports Rule and Never Announced It

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 19, 2026 · 4 min read
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Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration has killed a proposed state rule that would have kept biological males out of girls’ sports teams and female locker rooms, and it did so without telling anyone. The rulemaking was withdrawn on July 30, 2026, but the public only learned about it in mid-September, when Radio IQ reported the change sitting quietly on a state regulatory website.

There was no news release. As far as Washington’s 7News could tell, there was no social media post or public notice either. The governor who campaigned as a moderate made one of the most consequential culture-war decisions of her first year in office and left it for reporters to find.

A rule three athletes fought for

The effort started with three women. In April 2025, Olympic swimmer Réka György and former Roanoke College swimmers Lily Mullens and Carter Satterfield petitioned the Virginia State Board of Health to bar biological males from female-only athletic teams and competitions, and from female spaces where women and girls could be undressed.

In August 2025, after receiving more than 2,300 public comments on the petition, the board unanimously approved it, 14-0, and authorized the state to start writing regulations, according to OutKick. That October, then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the board to “protect and preserve the… public health of women and girls” by moving the rule forward, Radio IQ reported. A formal public comment period on the rulemaking followed; according to The Advocate, 321 comments were submitted before it closed.

Then Spanberger took office. The Virginia Regulatory Town Hall site now lists the proposal as “withdrawn on 07/30/2026,” after the comment period had ended. OutKick reported that the State Board of Health’s notice said it would not proceed “upon review of statutory authority.”

Her explanation came at Pridefest

The only public explanation from the governor came when a reporter asked. In an interview after she spoke at Virginia Pridefest, Spanberger told Radio IQ’s Brad Kutner: “There’s no legal authority to move forward with rulemaking and prior administrations may have tried to create lanes and we’re not doing that.”

According to people familiar with the decision, Radio IQ reported, Spanberger consulted the office of Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones and concluded the rule was outside the Board of Health’s authority.

From the stage at the same event, she told the crowd: “I want to make members of the LGBTQ+ community know that you have a governor that values your community.”

That is her right. But if the legal case is as clear as she says, there was no reason to hide it. A governor confident in her reasoning holds a press conference. 7News asked her office why the change wasn’t announced. OutKick asked too. Neither got an answer.

State Sen. Tara Durant offered one theory, as paraphrased by 7News: polling shows 75 to 80 percent of Americans oppose biological males competing in women’s sports, and the governor ended the process quietly because of it. Loudoun County parent Abbie Platt was blunter, telling 7News that Spanberger “campaigned as a moderate and essentially lied to Virginians.”

“I got bumped out from the final”

György knows exactly what the rule was meant to prevent. A Hungarian Olympian who swam for her country at the 2016 Rio Games and a two-time ACC champion at Virginia Tech, she finished 17th in the 500-yard freestyle preliminaries at the 2022 NCAA championships, one spot short of the consolation final. Lia Thomas, a biological male, qualified and won the national title in that event.

“Because the rule-makers let him compete in the women’s category, I got bumped out from the final,” she told OutKick. She described the locker room the same way many female athletes have: “I was always looking behind my shoulder because I had no idea when my privacy was going to be robbed away.”

Her reaction to the withdrawal was disappointment, not surprise. “It’s really sad for me because I had the petition filed a year ago, and Youngkin approved it,” she said. “I have a feeling that she’s afraid of the backlash of people, what they’re going to say or think.” Her message to the governor: “I really do hope that she is going to follow this rule, and she is going to stand up for women in Virginia.”

What’s still in place

The withdrawal doesn’t erase every protection in the state. In February 2025, the Virginia High School League, which oversees most public high school sports in Virginia, changed its eligibility policy to limit girls’ sports to students whose biological sex is female. And model policies issued by the Virginia Department of Education in 2023 direct schools to generally separate teams and intimate facilities by biological sex, though local school divisions have applied them unevenly.

But those are league rules and guidance, not state regulation, and they can change with the next board vote or the next administration. The state-level protection that three athletes petitioned for, and that a unanimous Board of Health voted to pursue, is gone. Equality Virginia, which welcomed the withdrawal, at least said so out loud. The governor’s office let a website say it for her.

If Abigail Spanberger believed in this decision, she would have announced it instead of leaving it on a website for reporters to find.

Sources

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