Female athletes have filed a legal complaint against a Connecticut policy that allows transgender athletes to compete as their gender of choice.

Conservative nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom is advocating for Selina Soule and two minor female athletes. ADF filed an official discrimination complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights on June 17, claiming that a new Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy allowing biological males who identify as transgender women to compete in female athletics deprives the female athletes of equal opportunity.

"Permitting boys who are male in every biological and physiological respect...to compete in girls’ athletic competitions"

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“Like large numbers of girls around the nation, each Complainant has trained much of her life—striving to shave mere fractions of seconds off her race times—in order to experience the personal satisfaction of victory, gain opportunities to participate in state and regional meets, gain access to opportunities to be recruited and offered athletic scholarships by colleges, and more,” stated ADF’s complaint on behalf of the three teenage girls.

“Those dreams and goals -- those opportunities for participation, recruitment, and scholarships—are now being directly and negatively impacted by a new policy that is permitting boys who are male in every biological and physiological respect -- including unaltered male hormone levels and musculature—to compete in girls’ athletic competitions if they claim a female gender identity.”

Soule stated on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that she missed qualifying for the regional New England track and field championship meet by just two places, finishing in eight place when the top six advance. She stated that two of the finishers who placed above her were biologically male, so she would have otherwise advanced.

“Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field,” said ADF’s legal counsel, Christiana Holcomb, in a news release. “Forcing female athletes to compete against boys is grossly unfair and destroys their athletic opportunities.”

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ADF claims that the CIAC policy allowing boys to compete with girls violated the protections of Title IX, a federal law that preserves equal opportunities for women in athletic competition and ultimately prevents sex-based discrimination.

“Title IX was designed to eliminate discrimination against women in education and athletics, and women fought long and hard to earn the equal athletic opportunities that Title IX provides. Allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women under this law,” Holcomb continued to say. “We shouldn’t force these young women to be spectators in their own sports.”

Holcomb revealed on Carlson’s show that a single individual male athlete “now holds ten records inside the state of Connecticut that were once held by ten individual girls that were established over the course of about a twenty year period.”

The presence of transgender athletes in competitions typically engaged in by members of the opposite sex impacted the National Collegiate Athletic Association in the spring, when CeCe Telfer became the first publicly-known trans woman to become an NCAA track and field champion, winning the 400m hurdles, reported Outsports.

“There are people who say I have the benefit of testosterone,” Telfer said. “But no: I have no benefit. I’m on hormone suppression, it doesn’t help.”

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Telfer’s victory sparked national controversy, and was even the inspiration for one of Donald Trump Jr.’s tweets.





“Girls competing against boys know the outcome before the race even starts: They can’t win,” Holcomb noted in the news release. “Boys will always have physical advantages over girls; that’s the reason we have women’s sports.”

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ethanycai



