March 25, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — The Trump administration has formally weighed in on the side of Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell, the Connecticut high school athletes suing for the right to compete and be judged against only members of their own sex.
The girls are suing the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) for allowing gender-confused boys to compete against females, unjustly impairing their ability to earn not only competitive recognition, but also scholarships for their hard work. Soule has also filed a complaint on the matter with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is still pending.
On Tuesday, U.S. attorney general William Barr signed a statement of interest on the matter, formally asserting the administration’s stance that CIAC’s policy violates federal Title IX rules that guarantee equal opportunities for girls in sports.
“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,” the statement reads. “To the contrary, CIAC’s construction of Title IX as requiringthe participation of students on athletic teams that reflect their gender identity would turn the statute on its head.”
“Under CIAC’s interpretation of Title IX, however, schools may not account for the real physiological differences between men and women. Instead, schools must have certain biological males — namely, those who publicly identify as female — compete against biological females,” the statement continues. “In so doing, CIAC deprives those women of the single-sex athletic competitions that are one of the marquee accomplishments of Title IX.”
Chase Stranglo of the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the transgender athletes, responded by declaring that the organization’s clients “are two high school seniors who are just trying to enjoy their final track season of high school and who now have to contend with the federal government arguing against their right to equal educational opportunities. History will look back on these anti-trans attacks with deep regret and shame. In the meantime we will continue to fight for the rights of all girls to participate in the sports they love.”
In fact, gender-confused students remain free to compete against members of their actual sex, and research affirms that boys who call themselves girls retain physical advantages over real girls.
Last June, the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper concluding that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass [or power] when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to [below International Olympic Committee guidelines] for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy.” Therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Such findings are consistent with those of organizations like USA Powerlifting, which contends that “men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone, do not go away. While MTF [‘male-to-female,’ meaning men who drug themselves to appear and perform more like women] may be weaker and less [muscular] than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than [sic] of a female.”