Female Athletes Challenge Policy Allowing Transgenders to Compete Against Women

Transgender
Getty Images/Rudy Gonzalez
Alana Mastrangelo

Female student athletes in Connecticut are challenging a new policy that allows transgenders to compete against women. Attorneys representing the students submitted a complaint on Monday, alleging that the policy “directly and negatively impacts” the “dreams and goals” of the female athletes.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys representing three female track athletes submitted a complaint on Monday to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, asking it to investigate illegal discrimination against the female high school students over a new policy adopted by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC).

ADF alleges that the female athletes have been deprived of honors and opportunities ever since the CIAC adopted a policy allowing biological males to compete in against females in athletics. ADF adds that CIAC’s policy is in direct violation with the requirements of Title IX.

“Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field,” said ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb, “Forcing female athletes to compete against boys is grossly unfair and destroys their athletic opportunities.”

“Title IX was designed to eliminate discrimination against women in education and athletics, and women fought long and hard to earn the equal athletic opportunities that Title IX provides,” she added, “Allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women under this law.”

“We shouldn’t force these young women to be spectators in their own sports,” affirmed Holcomb.

Read more from the ADF complaint below:

The Complainants are three high school girls who compete at elite levels of girls’ track in Connecticut. Like large numbers of girls around the nation, each Complainant has trained much of her life—striving to shave mere fractions of seconds off her race times—in order to experience the personal satisfaction of victory, gain opportunities to participate in state and regional meets, gain access to opportunities to be recruited and offered athletic scholarships by colleges, and more.

Unfortunately for Complainants and other girls in Connecticut, those dreams and goals—those opportunities for participation, recruitment, and scholarships—are now being directly and negatively impacted by a new policy that is permitting boys who are male in every biological and physiological respect—including unaltered male hormone levels and musculature—to compete in girls’ athletic competitions if they claim a female gender identity.

“Because of the basic physiological differences — no one could credibly claim that a school satisfies its obligation to provide equal opportunities for girls for participation in athletics by providing, e.g., only co-ed track or wrestling teams and competitions,” states ADF of CIAC’s posing a threat to Title IX.

ADF also mentions how one male student athlete who failed to advance in the boys’ indoor track events last year had abruptly begun competing in the girls’ events, which in turn, deprived the female student athletes “of opportunities to advance and participate in state-level competition” in every statewide elimination track event that the student completed.

“This male now holds more than ten records within the state of Connecticut that once belonged to ten different girls,” adds ADF.

ADF is now asking the Office for Civil Rights to investigate Title IX violations, require CIAC to revise its policy, and “require the conference to acknowledge every girl who would have been identified as a champion or who would have qualified for participation in a higher level competition but for the participation of a male in her event.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.

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