Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, Chelsea Mitchell, and Ashley Nicoletti are athletes who compete at a high level in track and field. They’ve sweat, sacrificed, and strived to win countless meets. Their expectation was that if they put in the time and trained harder, they had an opportunity to beat any other female competitor.
Those expectations and opportunities were undermined by an ideologically motivated policy adopted by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) that allows males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletic events. Competitors like Selina, Alanna, Chelsea, and Ashley have been deprived of honors and elite athletic status because of the CIAC. This affront to common sense is also at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.
Since Mountain States Legal Foundation began in 1977, we have been committed to principles of liberty. We’ve always worked to promote and safeguard an original interpretation of the law, applying sound legal principles to our cases. It has been a cornerstone of our practice for more than 45 years. When organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)—the law firm representing the athletes—come to us asking to support their efforts, we don’t shy away from the call to protect liberty and the rule of law.
MSLF filed an amicus in support of the athletes, because the CIAC’s policy flies in the face of the law’s plain text and original meaning.
Case Background
As Mountain States has said elsewhere, Title IX is a law passed in 1972 as part of the Education Amendments. It states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
For such a short statute, Title IX is expansive in covering every public school, and nearly every university (public or private) in the country. The legacy of Title IX is most visible in the rise of women’s participation in school athletics.
In today’s age of confused language—where the meaning of words has become a hotbed of relativism—certain factions of society try to confuse the general population about what exactly what the word “sex” means. But, if regulators, attorneys, judges, and, yes, high school athletic associations, use basic common sense and understand how to read laws as they were written, the definition becomes quite clear.
In a bevy of dictionaries from the 1970s, the definition of “sex” shares one common characteristic: each refers to the biological, binary nature of reproductive functions. The recent Florida case of Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County recognized that Congress—using the language of that decade—specifically referred to “biological sex” when crafting Title IX. The definition of that word at that time means that legislators meant for “sex” to mean nothing other than the two biological descriptors of “male” and “female.”
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy allows students to compete on sports teams based on their gender identity. No requirement for hormone blockers or testosterone levels is present in the policy. Such a policy violates Title IX’s most basic promise. It defies the requirement for separate opportunities for female athletics, and the Court’s maintenance of the text’s meaning. The CIAC’s policy must be rescinded, and all records attributing wins to biological males in female events must be retroactively adjusted to denote their unfair advantage.
Join the Fight
Since 1977, MSLF has fought to protect private property rights, individual liberties, and economic freedom. MSLF is a nonprofit public interest legal foundation. We represent clients pro bono and receive no government funding. Make your 100% tax deductible contribution today and join the fight.
What’s at Stake
If the coaches who have mentored these young women, and if the athletes who have worked tirelessly to compete at a high level, are forced to endure the CIAC’s policies, it would spell the end of female athletics in Connecticut. The joy they experience in coaching and playing will evaporate as women’s confidence, desire to win, and competitive spirit will lower alongside their rankings.
By warping the definition of “sex” to include subjective notions of gender identity, our culture has lost its sense of reality. Over 50 years of success in women’s sports is at risk of being sacrificed on the altar of a radical understanding of “inclusivity.” Title IX was passed to ensure men were not favored over women in their scholastic or athletic endeavors. Now, Title IX is used as a weapon against women instead of being their shield. Women will lose out on roster spots, state championships, scholarships, and all the benefits that accompany competing and winning in athletics. Once more, women will be treated as second class citizens should policies like this go unchanged.
MSLF’s amicus offers a plain text reading of Title IX, discusses how women benefit from sports beyond their athletic careers, and recognizes that it is not uncommon to right the wrongs in sports by rescinding medals. MSLF is committed to the plain text reading of federal statutes that respects the drafters’ original intentions. We stand side-by-side with our friends in the liberty movement, including ADF.
Case Timeline
- June 2019: Selina, Alanna, Chelsea, and Ashley file a complaint with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.
- Though the Department would initially work to enforce Title IX against the CIAC, the Biden Administration would end that enforcement in early 2021.
- February 2020: The female athletes file a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.
- April 2021: The district court denies the female athletes relief.
- May 2021: Female athletes appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
- December 2022: The Second Circuit affirms the district court’s ruling.
- February 2023: The Second Circuit agrees to rehear the case en banc.
- March 2023: Mountain States filed an amicus curiae brief in support of ADF, asking the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reverse its en banc opinion, and for politics and dubious agendas to be eradicated from the locker room. We want coaches to be able to put their best female athletes on the field, the track, or in the pool and not have to sideline them because a biological male has taken their place.
Related Work
On May 15, 2023, Mountain States filed a comment with the US Department of Education, objecting to its proposed rule that would codify the ability of biological males to compete against females in athletic competitions. While the proposed rule does permit schools to fairly administer athletic participation based on sex in limited circumstances, in the vast majority of cases, schools will simply avoid federal investigations and give into transgender ideology. The proposed rule would therefore have disastrous effects on the safety of woman of all ages and the rule of law. The Department received over 150,000 comments on the proposed rule, which must now be reviewed and considered before proceeding further.
