Malliotakis meets Billie Jean King at U.S. Open 

Legislation was passed in Sept. 2024 to make King the first female athlete to receive the Congressional Gold Medal

Game. Set. Match.

It’s late August, which means the U.S. Open has returned to Flushing, Queens.

While taking in a match, U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Congressional District 11 which covers part of Southern Brooklyn and all of Staten Island, met with tennis legend Billie Jean King.

She posted the photo of the two on her Facebook account Aug. 24 and simply wrote, “BJK the GOAT.” 

In September of last year, Billie Jean King became the first female athlete to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. 

The honor was announced close to the 51st anniversary of the time King faced and defeated former tennis champion Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” match in 1973.

When the legislation was passed, Malliotakis spoke on the House floor in support of awarding King, listing many of her accolades.

“As the representative of Staten Island, NY—where the sport of tennis was first brought and played by Mary Ewing Outerbridge 150 years ago and where the first national tennis tournament was played in 1880—it gives me great pride to join my colleagues in honoring the woman who advanced the sport and achieved equal prize money for herself and all the women who followed,” she said. “Billie Jean King has inspired generations of American women. She lived the dream for her generation and women who came before her who lived during a time when they were restricted from reaching their full potential, and she has empowered younger women with the road she paved and the ceiling she broke.”

Throughout her career, King won 39 Grand Slam titles, 12 of them in singles. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. She also founded the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation.

In 2009, she also was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This past April, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“She used her platform to further champion the issue of equal prize money and threatened to boycott the U.S. Open unless the disparity was addressed,” Malliotakis said. “She founded the Women’s Tennis Association and put her reputation, tennis career, and title on the line for gender equality and never wavered. Her courage, resolve and determination pushed the U.S. Tennis Association to make the 1973 U.S. Open the first sporting event to offer equal prize money to female and male competitors.”