Department of Education will hear transgender track complaint

Washington D.C., Aug 9, 2019 / 12:00 pm

The U.S. Department of Education will hear a Title IX complaint brought by three female high school track athletes over a state policy allowing biologically male athletes to compete in female sports if they self-identify as females.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal group specializing in religious freedom cases, announced the news August 8. ADF represents the three female track athletes-Selina Soule, and two others whose names were withheld on the official complaint because they are minors-who filed the complaint with the Department's Office for Civil Rights in June.

"Selina and her fellow female athletes train countless hours in hope of the personal satisfaction of victory, an opportunity to participate in state and regional meets, or a chance at a college scholarship," ADF legal counsel Christina Holcomb said. "But girls competing against boys know the outcome before the race even starts."

"Boys will always have physical advantages over girls; that's the reason we have women's sports and the reason we look forward to OCR's investigation," Holcomb stated.

The three girls claimed that the state of Connecticut's new policy for high school sports, allowing biological males who identify as female to compete in female sports, violates Title IX.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on basis of sex in federally-funded education programs or activities.

"Because of the basic physiological differences and resulting strongly statistically significant differences in athletic capability and performance between boys and girls after puberty, no one could credibly claim that a school satisfies its obligation to provide equal opportunities for girls for participation in athletics by providing, e.g., only co-ed track or wrestling teams and competitions, with sex-blind try-outs and qualification based strictly upon performance," the complaint stated.

The policy of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) was in effect during the 2018 girls' outdoor track season when males identifying as females were allowed to participate in girls outdoor track competitions. Many Catholic schools in the state are members of the CIAC.

One of the males, a sophomore, had just participated in boys indoor track before changing his gender identity and participating in girls outdoor track. He set 10 state records in girls outdoor track, previously held by 10 different athletes.

This "deprived girls of opportunities to advance and participate in state-level competition," the complaint said, as athletes had not only track awards at stake, but may have also been seeking recognition for future recruiting and scholarship opportunities at the collegiate level.

On June 10, the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education released a document which included a sweeping denunciation of so-called gender theory and the "radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later."

"In all such [gender] theories, from the most moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one's gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex," the Congregation for Catholic Education wrote in the document entitled "Male and Female He Created Them."

"The effect of this move is chiefly to create a cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the individual and across society."