The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s statement of interest filed Tuesday in federal district court in support of Connecticut high school athletes and their mothers seeking to protect fair play in girls’ sports in the ADF case Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools:
“Girls shouldn’t be reduced to spectators in their own sports. Allowing males to compete in the female category isn’t fair and destroys girls’ athletic opportunities. Males will always have inherent physical advantages over comparably talented and trained girls—that’s the reason we have girls’ sports in the first place. And a male’s belief about his gender doesn’t eliminate those advantages. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy is also completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics. As the DOJ rightly explains in its statement of interest filed in this case, ‘Title IX and its implementing regulations prohibit discrimination solely “on the basis of sex,” not on the basis of transgender status, and therefore neither require nor authorize CIAC’s transgender policy. To the contrary, CIAC’s construction of Title IX as requiring the participation of students on athletic teams that reflect their gender identity would turn the statute on its head.’”
As a result of the policy in Connecticut, two males have taken 15 women’s state championship titles (held in 2016 by nine different Connecticut girls) and have taken more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith
