A judge has dismissed a hate group’s lawsuit filed on behalf of three white, cis girls who said that they were the victims of discrimination because two Black, transgender teens were allowed to participate in school sports.
The lawsuit was filed in 2019 by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), saying that the state’s policy of allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports was discriminatory against cisgender girls.
Related: Gay whistleblower lost his job for leaking emails about Trump admin’s anti-trans policies
The Trump administration rushed to back the lawsuit. A whistleblower, who was later fired, at the Department of Education released emails to the press that showed officials violating procedure in order to get behind the claim. The Department of Justice under Donald Trump filed a statement of interest in the case, supporting the attack on transgender rights. The Biden administration withdrew it this year.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
The Department of Education then threatened multiple times to deny funding to schools in Connecticut that were part of CIAC over the issue.
But now U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny has unceremoniously dismissed Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools on technical grounds. The two transgender track athletes in the state who were repeatedly named in the lawsuit as examples of CIAC’s inclusive policy – Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller – have both graduated high school, and ADF couldn’t even name any other trans girls participating in sports in the state.
The ADF complaint referred to transgender girls who want to compete in sports as “boys” and “biological males,” because the group misgenders transgender people as a matter of policy. The complaint argued that Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in schools, was being violated because allowing transgender girls was, they argued, the legal equivalent of allowing boys to compete in girls sports and would take away cisgender girls’ chances to win trophies.
The CIAC also used Title IX to defend their position, saying that it bans discrimination based on sex, which includes discrimination against transgender people because it’s impossible to discriminate against transgender people without taking sex assigned at birth into account. This is also the Biden administration’s position on the law.
The ADF said that they will appeal the dismissal.
