I’m back and more than ready to tackle the issue of males taking over female sports and spaces.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit struck down West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act, which bans males from female sports.
H.B. 2917 required “for an official or unofficial school-sanctioned athletic or sporting event, that each athlete’s participation in the athletic or sporting event be based on the athlete’s biological sex as indicated on the athlete’s original birth certificate issued at the time of birth; providing a revised designation for sporting events; and providing a means by which civil actions can be commenced.”
By the way, two days after this ruling, five West Virginia female athletes refused to compete in the shot put against a male.
A “transgender female” identified as B.J.P., an 11-year-old, sued the state over the law. This male decided he was a female when he was three. Not kidding.
In January 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia upheld the law.
The 4th Circuit issued an injunction against the law.
I forgot to emphasize a critical point that GWB brought up in a comment. West Virginia allowed this male to change his name and sex on his birth certificate! Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t allow that to happen! Sheesh.
West Virginia asked the Supreme Court to allow the law to go into effect pending litigation of the merits of the case.
SCOTUS declined the emergency request.
A female athlete asked the 4th Circuit to reinstate the law.
West Virginia defended the law before the 4th Circuit in October 2023.
This week, the 4th Circuit sided with the young boy over females.
Judge Toby Heytens claimed West Virginia did not make the case that allowing boys in girl sports jeopardized the girls’ safety:
For one thing, limiting the beneficiaries of the State’s largesse “begs the question” of whether the challenged classification is justified in the first place. Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 731 n.17 (1982). A State’s decision to create a classification that benefits only one class at the expense of others must itself be “substantially related to achieving a legitimate and substantial goal.” Id. Without more, the defendants may not simply posit that all cisgender girls are entitled to be protected from competition from all transgender girls, even when the result is harm to transgender girls.
Heytens also cared about the “stigma” B.J.P. could face if he could not participate on the girls’ team.
The poor male would face too much potential harm because he has been living as a girl for so long:
But the Act goes further by requiring B.P.J. to take on additional harms to avoid forfeiting the ability to play school sports altogether. B.P.J. has been publicly living as a girl for more than five years. During that time, her elementary and middle schools created gender support plans to affirm her gender identity and ensure she is recognized as a girl at school. To align with her gender identity, B.P.J. has changed her name, and the State of West Virgina (whose Act is challenged here) has issued a birth certificate that recognizes her changed name and lists her sex as female. B.P.J. also takes puberty blocking medication to prevent her body from experiencing male adolescent development and estrogen hormone therapy, which is leading her to develop the outward physical characteristics—including fat distribution, pelvic shape, and bone size—of an adolescent female. Her family, teachers, and classmates have all known B.P.J. as a girl for several years, and—beginning in elementary school—she has participated only on girls athletic teams.
Therefore, giving the male a choice to perform on the girl’s team or only the boy’s team is not a choice.
To make the male make that choice would undermine “her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy.”
WHAT!?
What about the 100 girls displaced in competitive rankings, this male in track and field?! A female athlete contended in her filing in July 2023:
Over the past spring track season, B.P.J. has pushed more and more biologically female athletes aside. B.P.J.’s athletic skills have markedly improved. By the State’s count, B.P.J. displaced over 100 different girls in competitive rankings this spring track-and-field season. Worse, B.P.J. denied two girls the chance to compete in conference championships. The displaced girls will never be able to recover those opportunities. This broad displacement contradicts what B.P.J. told the Court a few months ago—that not one “single person” would be harmed by enjoining this validly enacted State law, ECF 49, at 1. We now know that dozens of young student-athletes have already been harmed.
Why do we even have Title IX? Oh, that’s another piece I’m writing about today since Biden’s revamp of Title IX does nothing to protect females in sports and spaces.
Oh, NOW a court cares about hormonal differences when it concerns a male. You guys, the lack of self-awareness in this paragraph blows my mind:
It also would expose B.P.J. to the same risk of unfair competition—and, in some sports, physical danger—from which the defendants claim to be shielding cisgender girls. By participating on boys teams, B.P.J. would be sharing the field with boys who are larger, stronger, and faster than her because of the elevated levels of circulating testosterone she lacks. The Act thus exposes B.P.J. to the very harms Title IX is meant to prevent by effectively “exclud[ing]” her from “participation in” all non-coed sports entirely. 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a).
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