RILEY GAINES: Georgia voters must reject Jon Ossoff's awful record against women

As a former collegiate swimmer who raced against, and lost opportunities to, a male competitor, I know exactly what is at stake when women's sports are not protected: scholarships, records, roster spots, and the promise of Title IX - that women and girls would finally have an equal opportunity to compete on a level playing field. It happened in Georgia. And now, in 2026, the safety of every girl in Georgia remains on the line.

When it has mattered most, Georgia Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff has abandoned women and girls every single time.

Start with sports. Sen. Ossoff has had three chances to stand up for female athletes --three chances to say girls' sports are for girls. Three times, he voted no.

In March 2025, he voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a straightforward, common-sense bill that would have clarified under Title IX that female sports are reserved for females based on biological sex. The measure would have reinforced the law's original intent.

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In March 2024, he voted to kill an amendment that would have withheld federal funds from schools and states that allow men to compete in women's programs.

In March 2021, he voted against an amendment to stop schools from placing male athletes in female categories. 

Three chances to stand with women. Three times he refused.

But it doesn't stop there. Sen. Ossoff is also pushing to override Georgia's state-level protections by repeatedly backing the federal Equality Act. He co-sponsored it in 2021 and 2023 and campaigned on it in 2020. The bill would redefine sex to include gender identity across federal civil rights law, with no carveout for sports. Legal experts and elite female athletes - many of them not conservatives - have warned exactly what that means: co-ed competition, lost opportunities, and compromised safety.

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The Equality Act is not a compromise. It is a federal mandate that wipes out Georgia's right to protect its own girls.

Ossoff's record goes far beyond the playing field. He's supported legislation that would force access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms based on gender identity. Translation: He supports policies that would require your daughter to undress in a locker room with a man. No regard for privacy. No regard for safety.

He supports policies that tell women-including survivors of sexual assault-that their discomfort and fear don't matter, that male feelings matter more than a woman's physical safety. 

Think about women fleeing abuse, staying in domestic violence shelters with their kids. These women deserve dignity, privacy, and trauma-informed policies. Yet Ossoff has supported measures that would force women's domestic violence shelters to admit males who identify as women, despite survivors repeatedly that these policies can retraumatize them and push them back onto the streets. That's not compassion. That's cruelty dressed up as progress.

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Religious freedom isn't safe either. Sen. Ossoff introduced a bill to override the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, forcing Christian hospitals in Georgia to perform transgender surgeries against their deeply held beliefs. 

Put it all together, and the pattern is obvious. On women's sports, women's spaces, women's shelters, and religious freedom, Jon Ossoff sides with Washington mandates over Georgia families. Georgia is trying to protect fairness. He's trying to federalize it away.

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Some say fairness can be preserved with hormone rules or case-by-case exceptions. It cannot.

I lived the reality. Women are asked to be quiet, to disregard our gut instinct when it tells us it's wrong to nonconsensually undress next to a man in a locker room, to surrender records and roster spots to maintain someone else's feelings. Title IX was never meant to make women invisible to solve a controversy. It was meant to ensure that we count.

Georgia is leading with courage. Georgia schools can maintain girls' teams for girls. Georgia courts may soon confirm that simple truth nationwide. Georgia senators should help, not hinder. 

Sen. Ossoff has had multiple chances to stand with Georgia women and girls. He chose politics --and fear of radicals in his party --over our daughters, over even his own daughter. With the Supreme Court poised to potentially uphold states' authority to protect women's sports, it is time for Georgia's senator to do the same. It's time for a real man to send Jon Ossoff home.

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