A male middle-school athlete triumphed over female competitors more than 700 times due to the Biden administration’s pro-transgender policies, according to a motion to stay and preliminary injunction filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) last week in State of Tennessee v. Cardona.
In their motion, ADF lawyers request the court to immediately halt the Biden administration’s Title IX overhaul, which incorporates “gender identity” into the definition of “sex” within federal laws. This redefinition mandates that schools receiving federal funding must allow male athletes who identify as female to participate in girls’ sports. The administration’s rewrite is set to be implemented on August 1, but the changes would be temporarily paused while the case advances if ADF prevails in its motion.
“While the administration claims this change won’t affect sports, it has already made its position clear that men who identify as women should compete in women’s sports under Title IX,” said ADF Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau. “In fact, the administration has supported a male student’s efforts to compete against our client and other girls in women’s sports in West Virginia.”
Rouleau pointed out that after a federal court allowed a middle-school boy, referred to in the court filings as “B.P.J.,” to compete on the girls’ team, he beat girls “more than 700 times in cross country and track-and-field events and took our client’s spot to compete at a conference championship.”
The Biden administration’s support of transgender-identifying athletes extends beyond lost athletic opportunities, as per Rouleau. ADF’s client, a West Virginia female athlete now in high school, “has also lost her right to use the women’s locker room free from harassment and without a male present,” Rouleau said. ADF lawyers are also representing Christian Educators Association International and have joined lawsuits in several states since Biden’s Department of Education announced the Title IX changes on April 19.
“This egregious example is just one of many ongoing difficulties girls are facing with this illegal rewrite of federal law and vast executive authority overreach,” Rouleau said.
