A Judge Substitutes Feelings for Justice
LAWYERS in a high-profile lawsuit over transgender athletics in Connecticut have filed a motion asking the judge to recuse himself. At issue is whether attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom can refer to biologically male high-school athletes as biological males, though the students identify as women. By denying the lawyers the right to do that, the judged revealed his ideological animus against the plaintiffs and would, in essence, force one side in the dispute to adopt the other’s theory of the case.
The trouble all began in the 2017-18, when two biologically male, transgender students, Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, began competing against female athletes in track and field. They literally ran away with all the top medals and accolades.
While the media applauded the duo for bravery, female runners Selina Soule, Alana Smith and Chelsea
Mitchell were relegated to the sidelines of women’s sports, watching athletes born the opposite sex sweep the titles and scholarships set aside for female competitors.
Soule, Smith and Mitchell filed suit in February against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic
Conference, alleging sex discrimination under Title IX. But now the judge in the case seems to have pre-decided it on the side of CIAC and its absurd policy of allowing biological boys to compete with girls — despite their obvious natural advantages.
In a transcript of a phone call between the ADF attorneys and
Judge Robert N. Chatigny, which I have reviewed, the judge informs the attorneys that their briefings shouldn’t refer to Yearwood and
Miller as biologically male. He added that “referring to these individuals as ‘transgender females’ is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency.”
In fact, the judge’s demand is only consistent with the Orwellian language games of gender ideology, which aim to obscure, rather than disclose, the truth. You don’t have to be a conservative to see this. The scientific truth is that Yearwood and Miller are biologically male. They were born with XY chromosomes, they have male muscle mass and stamina and they have gone through male puberty.
Gender dysphoria — the mismatch between a person’s subjective sense of gender and his biological sex — is real. In some cases, it’s very painful. Even so, a subjective state of mind doesn’t override natural reality.
Chatigny wants to protect Yearwood’s and Miller’s feelings perhaps. But he can’t do that and uphold judicial fairness, a fundamental requirement of his job.
As ADF attorneys told me, “if a judge dictates what words parties have to use, it can bias the case. It is essential that every litigant be able to present their case to an impartial court in the way that they believe is the most accurate and true to the facts. We’ve explained in our brief how the judge’s order prevents us from doing that for our clients.”
Kara Dansky, an attorney who serves on the board of the Women’s Liberation Front, a feminist group skeptical of gender ideology, told me, “The court is essentially interfering in the attorney’s professional ethical obligation to zealously represent his clients.”
Between the two of them, Yearwood and Miller took first and second place in 2018 in the girls’ outdoor 100-meter state open championships, winning a total of
‘ The language games of gender ideology truth.’ obscure, rather than disclose, the
15 girls’ state championship titles and more than 40 higher-level, female athletic opportunities over the past three years.
How can the plaintiffs argue that this shouldn’t be permissible, if the judge forces them to adopt their courtroom opponents’ worldview? Their very point is that Yearwood and Miller aren’t female where it counts in athletics: in the bodily realm. Again, it is bodies, not subjective mental states, that are the very issue in the case.
Trans activists and their allies like Judge Chatigny are determined that trans persons won’t feel bad. That’s admirable. But “not feeling bad” isn’t a right guaranteed under law. Fairness and equality, ideals that are enshrined in law, should bar athletes with male bodies from competing against those with female bodies.
The whole edifice of American antidiscrimination law, including Title IX, rests on there being a meaningful bodily distinction between the two sexes. Remove that foundation — and the justice of antidiscrimination law crumbles.
Libby Emmons is a senior editor for The Post Millennial.