Christy Mitchell is a mom on a mission. She is protecting her daughter’s ability to compete in school sports under Title IX without unfair competition by men.

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Mitchell: There are so many unfair things about what’s happening in women’s sports today. The unfair biological advantage that male athletes have when competing against female counterparts. The unfair destruction being done to women’s athletics. The loss of scholarships, of recruitment opportunities, of chances to compete at higher levels of sport. The unfair treatment by the media of girls and women who speak up against what’s happening.

But none of those injustices, in some ways, compares with what may be the most unfair aspect of the whole issue: the fact that we’re placing all the responsibility for resolving it on teenage girls.

This is not a problem teen girls should have to resolve, especially since they aren’t the ones who created it. Young women have their own instinctive sense of right and wrong. They may not grasp all the political and psychological intricacies of the transgender politics, but “fair?” Fair, they understand.

The adults created this increasingly convoluted mess, but they have no intention of taking responsibility for it, even as we approach the 50th anniversary of Title IX—a law designed to protect fair competition for women—on June 23. No, instead, they’re hiding behind the athletes out on the track and in the pools. And it’s working.

People who are angry at efforts to keep men out of women’s sports aren’t venting their fury at the coaches or schools or government officials. They’re venting it at the athletes—at people like my daughter.

When two male athletes began running against her in high school meets a few years ago, I waded into the bureaucratic red tape with everything I had. I wrote letters to the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.

I made appointments with the administrators at her school. I talked with the coach and athletic director. I stood in front of school boards. I made appointments with our congresswoman and our senator. I called our state’s civil rights office and talked to officials at the Department of Education.

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Some of them professed to be sympathetic, but none of them offered to do anything. One by one, they passed the buck, shrugged off the responsibility, and told me there was nothing they could do.

It was a school issue—but administrators said they were told to leave it to state athletic officials. It was a sports issue—but athletic officials said they were ordered to leave the matter to government authorities. It was a political issue—but our governor said the legislature would have to decide it…while legislators told me athletics groups would have to make the call. Everybody wanted it to be somebody else’s problem…

It’s a cruel cowardice these bureaucrats are hiding, and it’s changing countless young lives in irreversible ways. “Unfair” doesn’t begin to cover it.