MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit ruled Friday that a lower court has jurisdiction to determine if four female high school track stars could compete against transgender girls and sent the case back to federal court for further proceedings.
The four girls argued in front of a panel of judges on the Second Circuit in June for the second time. Their case was previously dismissed by a federal appeals court last December. In its decision Friday, the Second Circuit ruled the case was moot because all parties had already graduated and there was no legal mechanism to change the state’s official athletic records. But because of the national controversy over the issue, the court agreed to rehear the case.
Chelsea Mitchell led the complaint with three other girls against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. According to Mitchell, she lost out on four state titles because she had to compete against two biological males and asked for the records to be changed to give her victories to improve her employment prospects.
The Second Circuit’s ruling Friday found the plaintiffs established standing and that the federal court was not required to determine whether the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference had adequate notice of a Title IX violation to be liable for monetary damages.
Title IX, a 1972 federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in school sports, was at the crux of the debate with both sides arguing the other’s point of view amounts to sex discrimination.
“For the purposes of the standing inquiry, we must also assume that plaintiffs are correct that allowing intervenors to compete in those races violated Title IX,” U.S. Circuit Judge Alison J. Nathan, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote in her opinion. “With these assumptions in mind, we conclude that plaintiffs adequately pled a concrete, particularized, and actual injury in fact.”
Nathan was joined in full by U.S. Circuit Judges Richard Sullivan, Joseph F. Bianco, Michael H. Park, William J. Nardini and Steven Menashi, all Donald Trump appointees.
While the defendants argued the female track athletes failed to establish an injury to have standing in the case, Nathan disagreed.
Because of the athletic conference’s policy, which allowed an individual to participate based on their established gender identity, the four track athletes claim they were discriminated against by being required to compete against transgender girls.
“Plaintiffs allege that they were denied equal opportunities in track and field competitions and, as a result, they were also denied the publicly recognized titles and placements that would have flowed from these opportunities,” Nathan wrote. “And crucially for plaintiffs’ request for an injunction to alter the records, the alleged impact of the CIAC Policy on plaintiffs is measurable, not abstract or speculative.”
The court also found the plaintiffs have standing to seek an injunction for the defendants to remove the transgender girls’ scores from the official athletic record.
“The same would be true were the shoe on the other foot,” Nathan said. “Imagine if some other athletic conference adopts a policy that, unlike the CIAC Policy, categorizes transgender girl athletes as boys in their public records of athletic accomplishment. Under today’s holding, if those transgender girls sue alleging a Title IX violation, they would have standing to seek to have those public records altered to indicate their alleged accurate athletic achievement.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, a Barack Obama appointee, dissented, saying the plaintiffs failed to show that their injury would be redressed if the official athletic records were changed.
“An order requiring defendants to remove record times and titles achieved by transgender girls that have no impact on plaintiffs’ own athletic achievements would at most afford plaintiffs ‘psychic satisfaction,’ and remedy no actual injury of plaintiffs,” Chin said.
Chin added that changing the athletic record would not guarantee prospective employers to hire any of the four female athletes in the future.
“And the reality is that no prospective employers would be bound by an injunction issued in this case to overlook the current records, which reflect the outcomes of the races as they were run,” Chin said.
Chin was joined fully in the dissent by U.S. Circuit Judges Susan L. Carney, an Obama appointee, and Maria Araujo Kahn, who was appointed by Biden.
Overall, 15 judges participated in the decision, with most concurring and dissenting in part including U.S. Circuit Judges Eunice C. Lee, Sarah A.L. Merriam, and Myrna Perez, all Biden appointees. Additionally, U.S. Circuit Judges Raymond J. Lohier, an appointee of Obama, and Beth Robinson, a Biden appointee, also participated in the dissent in part.
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