Judge greenlights ‘Save Women’s Sports’ Title IX case amid more forfeitures over alleged trans player

Years before the University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas drew national attention to men who identify as women dominating girls’ sports through suitability through gender identity, male sprinters who identify as girls came first and second in the Connecticut high school track and field championships, which gave rise to a investigation going nowhere from the Trump administration And lawsuit by parents of the female athletes they defeated.

After a detour through the federal courts, with the the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the case nearly a year ago by overriding the panel of three judges that supported the American district Judge Robert Chatigny’s 2021 rulingthe amended lawsuit of now-adult Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith and Jennifer Nicoletti cleared a crucial hurdle last week.

The purified President Clinton candidate Chatigny rejected the request for dismissal by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and its member school districts, finding that the amended lawsuit alleges disparate treatment based on the gender of the female athletes.

He said defendants may be liable for discrimination under Title IX and plaintiffs may be able to recover “nominal damages, attorneys’ fees and costs,” depending on legal discovery. A docket note shows that the parties will meet the judge again on December 3 during a telephone conference.

The The full appeals court disagreed with Chatigny’s original finding that the case was moot after transgender champions Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller graduated and that the failure to correct “past athletic records,” to remove male winners in girls’ sports, was not a legal injury.

It said the girls “have, in fact, adequately pleaded a concrete, specific and actual injury…denial of equal athletic opportunity and the related loss of publicly recognized titles and placements” – plaintiffs want dozens of records corrected – by finishing behind Yearwood and Miller.

It’s an embarrassing turnaround for Chatigny, whose… removal that the girls sought in vain for “unfair bias” when they appealed his ruling. They cited his order to stop “bullying” Yearwood and Miller by calling them “male” and for allegedly making up his own science about biological sex.

Unlike 2021, Chatigny’s statement from last week is full of references to biological sex. He even twice used the phrase “biological males,” which he had considered “unnecessarily provocative” when applied to Yearwood and Miller three years earlier.

Attorneys for CIAC and the districts did not respond to questions from Just the news.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Rachel Rouleau of the Alliance Defending Freedom said CIAC’s transgender policy “degraded all of their achievements and damaged their athletic records, irreparably harming every female athlete’s interest in accurate recognition of her athletic achievements,” citing the 2nd Circuit’s full rebuke of Chatigny for ignoring the relevance of rejected the records.

“This ruling creates one less obstacle for high school students in pursuing their athletic dreams,” Rouleau said Statement from ADF on the rulingthat comes as that of the NCAA two-year-old transgender eligibility policy – currently under consideration – represents the biggest test yet.

Several NCAA Mountain West women’s volleyball teams have lost matches against San Jose State University this season, with the University of Wyoming recently joined Boise State forfeits a second game.

It appears the forfeit concerns SJSU player Blaire Fleming, who can spike a ball with potentially dangerous force and is reportedly transgender, although neither Fleming nor SJSU has made an official statement on the player’s gender identity. The forfeiture notices from Wyoming and Boise colleges offer no explanation.

Advocates of sex-based sports, including San Diego State University’s Turning Point USA chapter, flooded SDSU’s Saturday game with SJSU, chanting “no men in women’s sports” and holding a banner reading “Woman = Adult Man Woman’. Kick-out reported.

An attendee unsuccessfully asked security to remove the protesters, while video shows SDSU Associate Athletic Director of Operations Dave Noll accusing one of the chanters of violating Mountain West guidelines, according to the Fox sports site.

SJSU suspended coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, reportedly for protesting Fleming’s inclusion, and team co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a suspected class action lawsuit against NCAA policy by female athletes, sponsored by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports.

SJSU has not provided an explanation for the suspension, saying only the head coach “is not with the team at this time.”

ICONS warned every conference school president in September that playing SJSU with Fleming on the squad would violate Title IX and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by denying female athletes “equal athletic opportunity and fair and safe competition,” according to a document obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Redacted documents released under the Wyoming Public Records Act show that the Wyoming athletes initially voted to play SJSU on Oct. 5 but then deadlocked, while Kick-out‘s report that Southern Utah forfeited a September 14 game because of Fleming led Wyoming assistant coach Becky Baker to conclude that “there is no way Fleming can continue playing in the MW.”

Still, Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman told a supporter on Sept. 27 that “our student-athletes felt safe in previous games the past two seasons” at Fleming, and that Fleming — who played women’s volleyball for Coastal Carolina University before South Carolina’s “Save Women’s Sports” law banned men on women’s teams — was “not the best or most dominant hitter” for SJSU.

ICONS sponsors another suit filed Wednesday against Mountain West and SJSU officials by SJSU coach Batie-Smoose and co-captain Slusser and several other female athletes from four other universities. They allege violations of Title IX and the First Amendment and demand an injunction against trans policies ahead of the Mountain West volleyball tournament on November 27.

The basis of Judge Chatigny’s ruling last week was CIAC’s allegedly “dismissive” responses to parents who complained about its transgender policy, which dated “before 2017,” when Yearwood and then Miller began competing in the girls’ field and to dominate.

For example, their first and second place finishes in 2019 took a championship from Mitchell and prevented Soule from advancing to “the next phase of the competition,” the ruling summarizes.

A CIAC representative told Mitchell’s mother that “further complaints on her part would receive no response and school officials themselves warned Chelsea to stop complaining,” Chatigny wrote.

Defendants conveyed “the dispiriting message that (female) interests and ambitions as student athletes were less worthy of protection than those of their male counterparts on the boys’ team,” in the context of “a long history of systematic discrimination against women and girls.” in high school athletics in Connecticut,” as Chatigny paraphrased the allegations.

The now adult women plausibly alleged that the CIAC policies in which Yearwood and Miller participated denied them “high-quality competitive opportunities,” the judge wrote.

Chatigny noted that the Clinton administration, which nominated him, deemed these opportunities relevant to Title IX compliance, and the 2nd Circuit further specified in a A twenty-year old precedent from New York that equal access to post-season matches is relevant.

“The disparity in treatment at issue here may have negatively impacted more girls and teams than the disparity at McCormick,” that 2004 precedent, through so-called “missed opportunities to compete after the season,” he wrote. The girls may even be able to prove the requisite “systemic effect” of denying equal opportunity “program-wide.”

Precedents from the Supreme Court and the 2nd Circuit, further complicated by Connecticut law protecting the participation of transgender people, each pull Chatigny in opposite directions, the judge said.

A strong case can be made that Congress intended the word “sex” in the 1972 Title IX to mean “the biological division of organisms into male or female,” but SCOTUS also ruled that employment discrimination against transgender people occurs on the basis of gender. he said.

Thomas moved from Penn’s men’s swimming team to the women’s swimming team after hormone therapy.

Chatigny cited statements about “athletic inclusion” in track meets under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which considers “competitive, administrative, financial or safety-related” needs as well as “the emotional impact on individual athletes of exclusion or differential treatment.”

Because he must “engage in a fact-specific analysis that balances the interests of the parties and the public” on the basis of a complete dossier, Chatigny ruled that the women’s claims are sufficient at this stage “to establish a prima facie case of sex discrimination based on Title. IX.”

Even if the defendants showed no ‘animus’ towards women and the CIAC’s policy was ‘facially neutral’, a 2nd Circuit Precedent on Discrimination in Sexual Misconduct Proceedings does not require animus and SCOTUS transgender precedent reaffirms this, he said.

“As a result of Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiffs reasonably believed that Defendants viewed girls’ sports as less worthy of consideration and support than boys’ sports” — a “mindset” the judge called “plausible.”

He also questioned why CIAC did not consult with the Trump administration’s Department of Education, which rescinded his predecessor’s transgender guidelines, when the girls’ parents complained. They could be financially liable if they “deliberately refrained in the belief” the government would side with the girls, the judge said.