Back on May 19, Tex as Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he was “launching an investigation” into a private organization called US Masters Swimming because, horror of horrors, the organization allowed a transgender woman to compete in women’s events at the 2025 Spring Nationals swim meet held in San Antonio in April.
This week, in a July 17 press release, Texas’ (adulterous) Transphobe-in-Chief upped the ante by announcing he is suing US Masters Swimming for having “engaged in false, deceptive and misleading practices by allowing men to compete in women’s events.”
In his press release announcing this “investigation,” Paxton — of course — claimed US Masters Swimming “allowed a male to compete in women’s events.”
As I noted in a blog post back in May, US Masters Swimming — a private, nonprofit membership organization — correctly categorizes trans women as women and puts them in the women’s events for competition. But Paxton, refusing to acknowledge actual science, insists trans women are men and spends thousands of dollars in public funds each year in legally questionable attacks on the LGBTQ community overall and transgender Texans specifically.
In this week’s press release, Paxton — whose wife, Sen. Angela Paxton, recently filed for divorce on “biblical” grounds following some sort of undisclosed “recent discoveries — declared: “U.S. Masters Swimming’s insane policy of allowing men to participate in women’s competitions is both deeply unfair to female competitors and unlawful. The organization has cowered to radical activists pushing gender warfare, and it has deprived female participants of the opportunity to succeed at the highest levels by letting men win countless events.
“This lawsuit will hold USMS accountable for its actions, and we will continue to fight to protect the integrity of women’s sports,” Paxton pledged self-righteously.
Just as an FYI, while Texas does have laws prohibiting trans girls from competing in female-gender-specific sports in grades K-12 in public schools and charter schools and in colleges, there is no such law governing private membership organizations. So that part of Paxton’s lawsuit is bullshit, for sure.
Paxton’s press release this week also claims that the lawsuit “highlights USMS’s past false, deceptive and misleading practices of representing that its women’s sports would be exclusively for females to participate in and win, only to turn around and steal awards and recognitions for women by giving them to men competing in women’s events.”
Once again, for those in the cheap seats (and the Texas Legislature and OAG office): transgender women are women. Transgender women are NOT men.
As far as US Masters Swimming engaging in some sort of nefarious secret plan, the fact that trans women compete in USMS events in the women’s division is NOT A FREAKIN SECRET! Dallas Voice wrote an article almost two years ago about a DFW women’s team called Lone Star Synchro, that includes a transgender member, and USMS’ then-new policy allowing “swimmers of all genders — and no gender — to participate in artistic swimming.”
Paxton’s press release concludes with a little more self-righteous hypocrisy, claiming the lawsuit “aims to hold U.S. Masters Swimming accountable to the women that it has harmed and the consumers that it has deceived.”
But again, this policy was not some big secret; this is a private, membership organization, and Paxton didn’t mention what women he claims to be defending here (it’s not his wife, though).
Anyway, if you have the stomach for it, you can read Paxton’s filing here.