Last week, opponents of transgender athletes suffered a major blow when a federal court ruled that West Virginia’s attempt to ban a 13-year-old transgender girl from competing in girl’s sports violated Title IX, which protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs.
The three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” that excludes “students of the male sex” from competing in women’s and girls sports. The Act defines a male as “an individual whose biological sex determined at birth is male.”
According to Michael McCann of Sportico, Judge Toby Heytens wrote the Act’s “sole purpose,” and “sole effect,” is to “prevent transgender girls from playing on girls teams.” As a result, Heytens said that he did not believe that excluding a 13-year-old transgender girl from a non-contact sport “is substantially related to the government’s important interest in participant safety.”
Even if the issue was about competitive fairness, Heytens indicated that it is not the government’s role to protect other girls from competing against transgender girls “when the result is to harm transgender girls.”
“Of course not,” he wrote. “The government has no interest in protecting one girl’s ranking in any competition.”
Heytens described this sort of prohibition as “otherwise unconstitutional discrimination” and found that it should not be allowed in this case.
[Sportico]
