A rally for women’s sports including Education Secretary Linda McMahon and former New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has been forced to relocate after venue operators backed out over the event’s “partisan political” nature.

Independent Women, formerly the Independent Women’s Forum, said Monday that the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute canceled the agreement hours before the start of “Her Game, Her Legacy,” billed as a celebration of Title IX, the federal ban against sex discrimination in education.

The event scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. MT Monday was moved to the Inn and Spa at Loretto in Santa Fe.

Beth Parlato, Independent Women Law Center senior legal adviser and Independent Women legal counsel, said the event was the “target of blatant discrimination, misinformation, and coordinated activist intimidation.”

“SFFMI’s eleventh hour behavior is unconscionable. However, we will not be silenced, intimidated, or erased,” Ms. Parlato said in a statement. “We will defend our rights — and the rights of women and girls — to assemble, to speak, and to celebrate their achievements. This is not only a cowardly betrayal of their obligations under the contract, but also a clear violation of both state and federal law.”

“Independent Women is prepared to pursue every legal remedy available to hold SSFMI accountable,” she added.

Independent Women Vice President for Communication Victoria Coley said that “SSFMI’s last-minute attempt to cancel our event is rooted in falsehoods and driven by hate and political bias. SSFMI isn’t just cancelling us — they’re canceling little girls and the very idea of celebrating women’s sports.”

The institute said that Independent Women’s description of the event as a “Celebration for Athletes and Families” was “fundamentally misleading, as the event described today in media reports is a partisan political event.”

“Further, this event requires levels of security, as well as a press conference, that the Independent Women’s Forum did not disclose in the agreement and which SFFMI is unable to accommodate,” the institute said. “As much as we support free speech, we want to make it clear that SFFMI is in disagreement with the message and intent of this particular event.”

Santa Fe Bulletin, a community platform on Facebook, responded: “Ok, Monday’s transphobia event at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion is officially cancelled.”

The left-wing group Indivisible Santa Fe said it plans to hold a protest at the event, describing the rally as “explicitly part of an Anti-Trans crusade led by various MAGA leaders.”

“We want them to know that advocating for women and girls in sports does not equal excluding trans people,” Indivisible Santa Fe posted on Facebook.

Indivisible also urged supporters to bring “protest signs, drums, instruments, pots and pans” to the hotel being used by Ms. McMahon “to let Sec. McMahon know that people out to destroy public education are not welcome in New Mexico.”

Others scheduled to appear at the rally include former high school volleyball player Payton McNabb, who suffered head and neck injuries from being hit by a ball spiked by a transgender player, and Linnea Saltz, a former NCAA Division I track runner who competed against a transgender athlete during the 2019-20 season.

The Santa Fe rally is slated to kick off a statewide bus tour stopping in all 33 New Mexico counties in celebration of the National Women’s Sports Week, which runs June 22-28, and “the Trump administration’s historic leadership in restoring Title IX to its original intent.”

Mr. Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order threatens to pull federal funding from states that allow male-born athletes who identify as female in girls’ and women’s sports, prompting the NCAA to end its transgender-eligibility policy and require athletes to compete based on biological sex.

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.