Muffet McGraw served as the head coach of women's basketball at Notre Dame from 1987 to 2020. During her tenure, she led the University to 26 NCAA tournaments, including 7 championship game appearances. In 2011, McGraw was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Title IX, the federal law that requires schools to provide equal funding for male and female athletic teams, is more than 50 years old, and yet girls and women have still not achieved equity in sports. Participation numbers for girls and women continually lag behind boys and men. Especially at the high school level, where girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities than boys to play sports.

Given the disparity of opportunity, funding, marketing, promotions and support you would think that those interested in protecting and advancing women’s sports would focus on the one thing that would truly help women’s sports at every level. Funding.

But instead, some elected officials focus on legislation like the poorly named ‘Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025’ at the national level and, here in Indiana, the innocuously named ‘Student Eligibility in Interscholastic Sports.’

The only concern of the legislators proposing these bills is to keep transgender athletes out of girls and women’s sports. According to the NCAA, there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes out of the 500,000 collegiate athletes presently competing. And only 35 out of six million high school athletes. Why aren’t these legislators more concerned with what is happening to the millions of girls and women who are not receiving the benefits of Title IX that they are entitled to?

And, unfortunately, it isn’t just legislators. The NCAA moved with atypical lighting speed to fall in line with a federal mandate to ban transgender women in college sports without even mustering an argument. Yet, close to 90% of their universities are not in compliance with Title IX. The recent settlement in the House class action lawsuit, and the current NCAA rules related to name, image, and likeness (NIL) are putting women even further behind men in the pursuit of equity.

You would think that elected officials in Congress and the Indiana Statehouse who want to “protect women’s sports” would do something about the growing financial equity. Instead, they are too busy keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports to actually do something that meaningfully benefits women’s sports.

Editor's Note: Although HB1662 failed earlier in the legislative session, it has been revived as an amendment to SB197. While there have been changes to the language, the ACLU of Indiana remains opposed because it still criminalizes homelessness. Read more here. 

HB 1662 is another in a string of big government bills that would have state elected officials substituting their opinions for the expertise of local Indiana officials. If passed, this bill would make sleeping on state or local public property a misdemeanor and would mandate that local law enforcement first provide a warning and then arrest Hoosiers who don’t have housing. 

It’s understandable that some elected officials and voters want a quick, easy answer to homelessness. People living their lives in our public spaces make some people uncomfortable, particularly when that causes crowding on a public sidewalk or space. But creating a new crime and mandating that local officials implement it regardless of whether they think it’s effective or humane is not the answer.

We won’t arrest our way out of homelessness. And if it becomes law, HB 1662, an unfunded one-size-fits-all mandate, would only make the problem worse. Arresting Hoosiers who are not committing crimes other than sleeping in public only deepens the hole they’re in. It also doesn’t help them with any long-term solution, and in many ways, makes long-term solutions harder to access. 

Because HB 1662 usurps local control and discretion, it commits scarce local resources to law enforcement instead of to treatment and housing. And local law enforcement agencies will end up spending those dollars to hold people in jails that are, in many cases, already over capacity and, in almost every case, ill-equipped to deal with mental health challenges.

Even more burdensome, local law enforcement will also be responsible for safely transporting and storing the belongings of anyone they arrest on the street. Courts continue to hold local jurisdictions responsible for the safe storage of the belongings of people they arrest for being homeless. This burden will not fall on the state legislature who passed HB 1662 but on the agencies, large and small, who don’t have personnel or space to collect, transport, and store the worldly possessions of people they arrest.

This is not a theoretical concern. The issue came up earlier this year in a hearing on SB 157, which set out procedures for removing squatters from private property. The Indiana Sheriff’s Association, who were neutral on that bill, testified that a big concern they have when arresting a squatter is the cost and liability that come with being responsible for that person’s possessions. But, this concern was not even a part of the Committee discussion on HB 1662 because legislators don’t understand the full consequences of substituting their judgement for the expertise of local officials.

The ACLU of Indiana believes in the decision making of local officials and the dignity of people without housing. We believe that instead of being a quick fix, an unfunded, big government mandate like HB 1662 will make the problem worse by increasing burdens on Hoosiers without housing, reducing discretion of local governments, and misdirecting scarce local taxpayer dollars.

The Indiana legislature has a role to play in funding local initiatives, bringing together experts, and making state agency resources more available to people living on our streets. In collaboration with local experts, civic and public health officials, and members of the homeless community, state leaders could make real progress on homelessness. But to do so, they’ll need to be more focused on problem solving and less on expanding state power.