Texas AG sues NCAA over 'misleading' marketing practices for not telling consumers its women's teams include men

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the NCAA over its marketing practices, a seemingly new angle in the fight to remove biological males from women's sports.

Paxton announced in a press release that the NCAA is presenting sports events as if they are women-against-women competitions but actually feature males.

The NCAA is "engaging in false, deceptive, and misleading practices by marketing sporting events as 'women's' competitions only to then provide consumers with mixed sex competitions where biological males compete against biological females," the press release stated.

The statement went on to say that seeing biological women compete against one another is an "important reason" consumers choose to view or attend those competitions. The announcement added that by falsely marketing and selling its competitions as "women's" sports, but providing a "mixed sex event," the NCAA has violated Texas' Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Furthermore, Paxton said the NCAA misleads consumers by not disclosing which of the athletes in female competitions are actually male.

Paxton requested courts grant a permanent injunction that prohibits the NCAA from allowing males to compete in women's sports when in Texas or when involving Texas teams.

An alternate suitable outcome would require the NCAA to cease marketing women's sports events as such when they actually have men playing on those teams; in which case those events would or should be referred to as "mixed sex competitions."

'Radical "gender theory" has no place in college sports.'

In the court filing, the lawsuit cited other precedents of false advertising over the years. This included a 1980 case involving false representations in a boat sale, where the seller of a used boat said the vehicle was in "perfect condition" and "just like new" when it was not.

A Sony Music Entertainment lawsuit from 2022 was also cited, in which consumers alleged Sony misled them by falsely representing that Michael Jackson was the musician who recording songs on an album released after his death.

These citations were used as examples of when the description of a product is different than how it was described. The filing continued, arguing that biological men competing in women's sporting events "fundamentally changes the characteristics, uses, and benefits of those events."

Paxton said that the NCAA is intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety of female athletes and is deceptively changing women's competitions to be co-ed.

He added, "When people watch a women's volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women — not biological males pretending to be something they are not. Radical 'gender theory' has no place in college sports."

Women's volleyball in the NCAA has, of course, been at the center of this gender-based controversy, with San Jose State University having faced boycotts during the 2024 season for having a male athlete on its women's team.

NCAA President Charlie Baker was recently grilled by Republican senators over the issue but cited a "federal standard" as the reason why no NCAA policy had been made to keep men out of women's sports.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), however, sided with the NCAA, pointing out that fewer than 10 transgender athletes were active in college sports.

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