Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that the administrators of the Miss United States of America pageant have the right to exclude transgender applicants.
On Nov. 2, judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected a claim by transgender pageant hopeful Anita Green, who claimed that restricting the contest only to “natural born females” violated an anti-discrimination law in Oregon, the state in which Green lives.
Green initially asked pageant National Director Tanice Smith to change the rule to allow trans contestants to enter, but was denied and an application to join the pageant was rejected. The activist then filed a lawsuit in an Oregon district court in 2019 hoping to get the courts to force the change.
Smith insisted that it should be illegal to ban trans contestants. And in a 2019 interview with NPR said, “Transgender women are equal to cisgender women.”
“This is about giving minorities a voice,” Green told Williamette Week upon filing the lawsuit in 2019. “I believe I’m beautiful, and I want to set an example for all women – cisgender and transgender – that beauty doesn’t have to fit into specific molds.”
“I felt as though I was being invalidated,” Green said of being denied entrance into the pageant. “I felt as though the organization was saying I am not a woman and I’m not woman enough.”
The pageant, though, clearly states that the contest is only for “natural born female” contestants.
The Miss United States of America pageant can prevent trans women from participating in the competition, a federal court ruled this week. https://t.co/1ge5JsvtVI
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 7, 2022
The pageant also bars anyone who has posed nude in any advertisement, art photos, or on film. Contestants who are mothers are also barred.
In their 2-1 ruling upholding a lower court ruling, Judges Lawrence VanDyke and Carlos Bea rejected the discrimination claim.
“The panel noted that it is commonly understood that beauty pageants are generally designed to express the ‘ideal vision of American womanhood.’ The Pageant would not be able to communicate ‘the celebration of biological women’ if it were forced to allow Green to participate,” the majority judges said.
“The panel concluded that forcing the Pageant to accept Green as a participant would fundamentally alter the Pageant’s expressive message in direct violation of the First Amendment,” they added.
The case in question is Anita Noelle Green v. Miss United States of America, LLC, DBA, No. 21-35228, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.