On Thursday, March 30, 2023, America’s Future submitted an Amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Soule, et al v Connecticut Association of Schools, Inc., Dkt. No. 21-1365 (2nd Cir. 2021) in a student athletics gender policy case. The brief was filed jointly with four other nonprofit organizations.
At issue is a 2013 “Transgender Participation” policy that the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) adopted requiring member high schools to allow participation in sex-specific sports based on a student’s professed gender regardless of the student’s actual biological sex.
Our brief argues, “[i]nstead of providing the same opportunities in sports to female students that are available to male students, the CIAC policy opens up female sports to males as long as those males ‘identify’ as females [except in cases where gender is claimed by a student for purposes of gaming the system].”
The plaintiffs are four female student-athletes aggrieved by CIAC’s “Transgender Participation” policy because it violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972a, causing injuries to the plaintiffs along with all other biological female high school student-athletes.
Personal injuries suffered by the plaintiffs include losses of achievements, rank-based losses in state-wide sports programs and competitions, losses of awards and benefits, and a loss of enjoyment. Additionally, injuries have accrued when biological males, competing as females, captured limited qualifying spots in state finals and championships, placing those same acclaimed spots just out of reach from all the biological female high school athletes, pulling the rug out right from under them.
Eventually, plaintiffs filed suit seeking to invalidate the policy as a violation of federal law, submitting a prayer for judgment in the form of correcting CIAC athletic records to remove the biological male athletic records from the females’ records, titles, and achievements.
At the trial level, the federal district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims. The court declined to invalidate the policy, deeming this claim for injunctive relief as moot because two of the plaintiffs had graduated, and the other two did not immediately face competition from biological males electing to be female. As for the plaintiffs’ request that past sports records be corrected, the district court determined that the plaintiffs lacked standing as modification of the records would not redress the claimed injuries.
Plaintiffs appealed but lost. However, on February 13, 2023, the 2nd Circuit, on their own volition, granted rehearing en banc. The court ordered parties to brief three issues. Our Amicus brief addresses one of the three, that is, “Whether plaintiffs have alleged an injury-in-fact redressable by ordering the alteration of athletic records.”
We argue in our brief that plaintiffs’ injury arising out of erroneous athletic records is redressable by the court and, if redressed, would not only cure the concrete injury of unlawful student records being memorialized but also eliminate an important continuing aspect of that injury. Those unlawful records inevitably lead to losses of scholarships and even, in some cases, employment. Our 35-page brief not only offers the court robust reasoning for vacating the dismissal and granting injunctive relief as requested but also provides a legal and scientific perspective on transgender ideology trends and mobilization of dangerous activists for malicious purposes under the guise of social justice.
As our brief explains, the en banc court has an opportunity to vacate the dismissal and prevent some of the hazards and dangers America is confronting “by not rewarding boys who seek to compete unfairly with girls…statute and regulations were adopted well prior to the current trans mania in order to protect girls’ sports, giving every indication that [the lower court] ruled in error, disregarding the objective truths, including that the plaintiffs female students athletic records unfairly diminished their accomplishments.”
More Amicus Briefs
Quick Links
