Adobe Stock
CV NEWS FEED // A federal appeals court recently blocked an Arizona law that bans boys from playing in girls’ sports at school, agreeing with a lower court’s description of the law as “discriminatory.”
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ September 9 decision upheld the ruling of a district court, which had held that prepubescent boys “do not have an athletic advantage over other girls” nor do they “present any unique safety risk to other girls,” according to the appeals court opinion.
The lawsuit was filed by the parents of two boys, one 11 years old, the other 15, whose parents say their sons both “identify” as girls. According to the appeals court opinion, the younger is interested in competing, or is already competing, on girls’ soccer, basketball, and co-ed cross country teams, while the older, who has been on puberty blockers since he was 11, joined a girls’ swim team when he was about seven years old.
The lawsuit argues that a 2022 Arizona law, which bans men and boys from playing in women’s sports, violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause and Title IX. The district court ruled that the law discriminated on the basis of gender, which the appeals court agreed with.
The appeals court’s opinion cited the district court ruling, which had stated:
Transgender girls who receive puberty-blocking medication do not have an athletic advantage over other girls because they do not undergo male puberty and do not experience the physiological changes caused by the increased production of testosterone associated with male puberty.
The appeals court also upheld a preliminary injunction applying only to the two boys that had been issued by the district court. Under the injunction, both boys cannot legally be told they cannot play on girls’ sports teams at school.
According to AP News, the case has now returned to the district court to be litigated. AP News added that Tom Horne, Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction and one of the defendants in the lawsuit, said that he “did not expect to get a fair hearing” in the appeals court, but rather “always expected to win this case in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
