The Seattle Times lost sports columnist Matt Calkins in a highly publicized resignation on Thursday, after Calkins claimed the paper refused to run a piece on women’s sports activists.
Calkins, who spent 11 years at the outlet, said the decision not to publish his column left him unable to perform the job he was hired to do.
The column centered on two Washington student-athletes who oppose allowing transgender girls to compete in female sports, that were recently at the center of a national controversy after they attended a Seattle Storm WNBA game to support Sophie Cunningham‘s support for protecting women’s sports. Calkins sought to make the case that supporting sex-separated athletic competition does not necessarily reflect hostility toward transgender people.
“I tried to write a column through the eyes of two student athletes who were kind of speaking out against biological males in, in girls/women’s sports and I submitted this column a couple Fridays ago to my editors … basically six days went by and they said, ‘Uh, we’re looking at it. Um, let me give it to this editor. This editor is gonna have a talk with the top two editors.’ And six days later they decided it wasn’t gonna run,” Calkins told Fox News Digital.
“All they said was that, ‘You didn’t tell us you were doing this in advance, uh, so we can’t run it.’ But I didn’t buy the excuse.”
Calkins added that he wanted to platform the voices of girls who speak out against trans athletes in women’s sports.
“I wanted to get their voices out there,” Calkins said. “I feel like if you look at most media, the girls who have to compete against biological males, I feel like their voices get stifled a lot.”
Calkins said the rejection followed a pattern involving several previous columns.
“Anytime I would kind of go against the grain, my columns would get spiked,” he said.
Calkins emphasized that he respects his former editors and understands the pressure they face when deciding whether to publish commentary on divisive subjects. He said he does not harbor personal animosity toward his former colleagues.
“I have a lot of respect for my editors,” he said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I were in their situation either.”
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At the same time, Calkins said he believed concern about public backlash had increasingly limited the range of opinions he was able to explore.
“I couldn’t do my job as a columnist because I feel like they were stifling my voice,” he said.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Seattle Times for a response, but has not heard back.
The controversy Calkins focused on in his column began before a July 28 game between the Seattle Storm and Indiana Fever at Climate Pledge Arena. Calkins attended a rally supporting Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who has spoken against transgender women participating in women’s sports.
At the rally, Calkins interviewed 16-year-old Ahnaleigh Wilson, a high school runner who said she had previously competed against a transgender athlete. He also later interviewed Tumwater High School basketball player Frances Staudt, who had declined to play in a game involving a transgender opponent.
Wilson subsequently alleged that Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted her inside the arena and used profanity while criticizing her support for Cunningham. The Storm publicly apologized for the encounter, and the WNBA fined Keaton and suspended her from attending five home games, according to reporting on the incident.
Calkins said the encounter prompted him to write the column, which he later published on Substack after leaving the newspaper
The dispute came as Washington voters prepare to consider Initiative IL26-638 in November. The proposed measure would require schools to prohibit students it defines as biologically male from competing in certain athletic activities reserved for female students. It would also require healthcare-provider verification of a student’s biological sex for participation in those activities.
Supporters describe the measure as a protection for fairness and safety in girls’ sports. Opponents argue that it would discriminate against transgender students and create invasive eligibility requirements. That wider political debate formed the backdrop to Calkins’s column, but his resignation raises a separate question about editorial discretion and the latitude afforded to newspaper columnists.
Calkins said he had no firm professional plans when he resigned. He intends to continue writing independently while considering what comes next.
“I love to keep writing. I love sports. I love to be able to speak my mind,” he said. “Hopefully I can stay in that realm.”
