History has a way of repeating itself. In 1971, the predominantly minority inmates of Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York staged a prison rebellion, demanding basic human rights, fair treatment, and dignity after increasing levels of violence and mistreatment by prison officials.

That same year, Connecticut high schooler Susan Hollander sued Hamden High School for not offering a girls’ cross-country team and denying her the chance to run with the boys’ team. Her complaint was glibly dismissed by Judge John Clark Fitzgerald, who opined, “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls.”

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One year later, and largely spurred by Fitzgerald’s ruling, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which guaranteed sex equality in all federally funded education programs in the United States.  

Two years later, in Frontiero v. Richardson, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that “since sex, like race and national origin, is an immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth, the imposition of special disabilities upon the members of a particular sex … violate[s] ‘the basic concept of our [legal] system.’” 

Fifty-three years hence, racial equality is still guaranteed. But sex equality is not, having made a regressive turn in favor of men parading as women and at the cost of basic biology, Supreme Court precedent, and common sense.

Until last week, when that changed. On Wednesday, the Department of Justice dragged the state of Maine into court over its failure to protect women’s sports and educational equality under Title IX. Despite the letter of the law — a 37-word statute prohibiting only “sex” discrimination, rooted incontrovertibly in the women’s movement — Maine Gov. Janet Mills failed to yield, writing to the department that they were “at an impasse.”

After weeks of negotiating, and after Mills had the hubris to tell the president to his face that she would “see him in court,” the state continued to refuse to play ball and protect Maine women and girls in scholastic athletics. Instead of guaranteeing equal educational opportunities for females, Mills chose to elevate the opportunities of a handful of biological boys over every other female athlete in the state. That choice was a bold one. And her desire to “see [the president] in court” was granted. 

The women’s sports battle — a function of the aggressive transgender agenda of the previous presidential administration with tendrils in all aspects of modern culture — has echoes of the very same struggle for fairness, recognition, and equality possessed by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the Attica uprising of 1971.

The Attica uprising was born out of frustration. The prisoners’ demands were simple: better living conditions, medical care, and an end to brutality. The state responded with force, culminating in a violent crackdown that left dozens dead. The rebellion became a symbol of resistance against systemic oppression.

Fast forward to 2025, and the battleground has shifted. The DOJ’s lawsuit against Maine argues that the state has failed to protect women by violating Title IX in allowing biological males to compete against female scholastic athletes. The lawsuit is not just about sports. It’s about the fundamental right of women to fair competition, safety, and recognition. It’s about the acknowledgment that women are worthy of equal treatment in the face of efforts by “transgender women” to divest them of roster slots, titles, and scholarships.  

Much like the Attica prisoners who demanded dignity, female athletes today are fighting for the right to be equal, nothing more, nothing less.  

In both cases, a marginalized group, whether prisoners or female athletes, has been forced to fight for fairness against a system that refuses to acknowledge its rights. In Attica, the state ignored the prisoners’ pleas until violence erupted. In Maine, female athletes and even elected leaders have spoken out, only to be met with political resistance, censure, lawsuits, and personal threats.  

The DOJ’s lawsuit is the Attica moment for women’s rights, yielding a kind of exhaustingly familiar history lesson that those of us old enough to remember the “before” never thought we’d have to revisit in the “after.” Women have had the vote for a little over 100 years. We’ve had educational equality for little over 50. We nearly lost the latter for want of someone powerful enough to step in and remind people such as Mills of what our grandmothers fought so hard to guarantee. 

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The underlying principles in the cultural watersheds in Attica and Maine remain the same: When a system fails to protect the rights of a group, that group must rise up and demand justice. The Attica uprising forced America to confront the ugly reality of a culture that had lost its way. Will we, as a society, recognize the injustice of men in women’s sports and act accordingly? Or will we, as in Attica, allow the voices of those fighting for fairness to be silenced?

The answer will define the future of women’s sports — and perhaps the broader fight for equality itself. 

Sarah Parshall Perry is vice president of Defending Education.