The federal government is formally objecting to Connecticut’s requirement that boys who “identify” as girls be allowed to compete against girls in high school athletics.
“They are incorrect. Title IX and its implementing regulations prohibit discrimination solely ‘on the basis of sex,’ not on the basis of transgender status, and therefore neither require nor authorize [the state’s] transgender policy,” explains a legal filing in a lawsuit over the dispute.
The complaint against the state, Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, was brought by female high school athletes and their mothers.
A lawyer for the girls, Christiana Holcomb of the Alliance Defending Freedom, said: “Girls shouldn’t be reduced to spectators in their own sports. Allowing males to compete in the female category isn’t fair and destroys girls’ athletic opportunities.”
ADF explained that “two males have taken 15 women’s state championship titles (held in 2016 by nine different Connecticut girls) and have taken more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone.”
Since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference began allowing boys who think they’re girls to take part in girls’ atheletics, the complaint says, plaintiffs Selina Soule, Alanna Smith and Chelsea Mitchell have been consistently “deprived of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels.”
“Mitchell, for example, would have won the 2019 state championship in the women’s 55-meter indoor track competition, but because two males took first and second place, she was denied the gold medal. Soule and Smith likewise have been denied medals and/or advancement opportunities,” ADF said.
Defendants include the Connecticut Association of Schools, Bloomfield Public Schools board of education, Cromell Public Schools board and Glastonbury Public Schools board.
The new filing by the federal government, on behalf of Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham and officials with the department’s civil rights division, said: “The [state] policy also illustrates why this court should not read Title IX to compel schools to require students to participate on sex-specific teams solely on the basis of their gender identity. Even if the term ‘sex’ is somehow ambiguous, if ‘only one of the permissible meanings’ of an allegedly ambiguous term ‘produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law,’ this court should adopt it because the judiciary ‘cannot interpret federal statutes to negate their own stated purposes.’ … Reading Title IX to compel schools to require biological males to compete against biological females in athletic competitions is precisely the type of interpretation that this court should reject on this ground.”
The federal filing explains: “Far from being required by Title IX, CIAC’s transgender policy is in tension with ‘the core of Title IX’s purpose’ – namely, ensuring that women have an ‘equal opportunity to participate’ in educational programs and activities.
“Many of Title IX’s implementing regulations – which permit sex-specific athletic teams, bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower facilities – would be in jeopardy if CIAC’s view of sex discrimination were to carry the day.”
It says the Supreme Court “has recognized that sex-based classifications sometimes are permissible because certain ‘differences between men and women’ are ‘enduring.'”
