A U.S. Court of Appeals reheard arguments in a lawsuit about Connecticut transgender athletes competing in high school sports on Tuesday.
A previous attempt to appeal the decision was thrown out by another court. The original court decision sided with the state policy and the transgender athletes.
Four athletes filed a lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) in 2020. The cisgender female students claimed it was unfair that they had to compete against transgender athletes.
John Bursch at the Alliance Defending Freedom represents them. He said the case should be retried because the cisgender students lost opportunities while competing with transgender athletes.
“One consequence is they didn't advance to additional races,” Bursch said. “Another consequence is they didn't get the gold medal or maybe a bronze medal. Another consequence is that when they applied to colleges, their records weren't as shiny as they should have been.”
Joshua Block is with the ACLU, who defended the state policy. He said the transgender girls did not dominate the athletic field, and even lost races to the plaintiffs.
“They didn't win every time, their times weren't outside the range of what a cisgender female could perform,” Block said. “They were repeatedly outperformed by cisgender females. They don't even do athletics in college anymore because of how awful this whole situation has been. In contrast, the plaintiffs are all college athletes, some have won scholarships, they're competing at elite levels. Three of those plaintiffs only raced against my client on a single occasion.”
The state athletic conference has allowed students to compete on the team that corresponds with their gender identity since 2013.
