California backs transgender girl’s right to join team

California and 17 other states are urging a federal appeals court to allow a 10-year-old transgender girl to rejoin her school’s girls’ softball team, saying a law in her state that would bar her participation violates federal civil rights protections and does not promote fairness in athletics.

The Indiana law “needlessly denies (the girl) something that her classmates take for granted: the ability to participate on an athletic team at school with her friends consistent with her lived identity,” the states, joined by the District of Columbia, said in a filing Thursday with the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. “Allowing transgender female students to participate in women’s sports promotes inclusive school environments that benefit all and does not compromise fairness or reduce opportunities for cisgender students.”

“Ten-year-olds deserve to be allowed to play softball,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. He said the Indiana law was “part of a nationwide attack on the rights of our LGBTQ+ communities,” and noted his participation in challenges to laws in other states restricting transgender individuals’ access to health care and insurance coverage, and barring them from stating their gender identity on drivers’ licenses.

The 10-year-old, identified as A.M., has identified as female since she was 4 and played on the girls’ softball team at her school in Indianapolis until May, when Indiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature overrode Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s veto of a bill excluding transgender females from girls’ sports teams in public schools.

A.M., represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit and won a ruling in July from U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, who ordered the school to let her return to the team and said the law appeared to violate Title IX, a 1972 federal law that bans sex discrimination in school sports and other programs receiving federal funding. Indiana, joined by 18 other Republican-led states, has appealed to the Seventh Circuit, referring to A.M. as a “biological male” and saying its law was necessary to avoid a “substantial risk that boys would dominate the girls’ programs.”

At least 18 states have banned transgender females from taking part in female sports in their schools, and several are being challenged in court. By contrast, California, 21 other states and the District of Columbia have laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity in education, employment, housing and other areas.

In Thursday’s filing, the states noted that the Supreme Court, in its 2020 ruling barring job discrimination against lesbians and gays, expressly stated — in a 6-3 opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch — that the federal law against job discrimination based on sex also applies to gender identity. They also said appeals courts have consistently overturned state laws that sought to bar transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

“A.M. has lived as a girl since the age of four. She has always been known to her classmates as a girl,” the states told the court. “The sole function of Indiana’s law is to exclude and stigmatize transgender girls like A.M.”

They also said studies, including one ordered by Indiana’s governor before his veto, have found no evidence that transgender females have any advantage over others on female sports teams. For older athletes, they noted, many states and sports organizations require transgender females to have hormone treatment or undergo sex-reassignment surgery before competing.

“There is no evidence that other girls complained about A.M. possessing an athletic advantage,” and she was actually considered “one of the weaker athletes on the team,” the states said. They said the girl’s gender dysphoria — her consciousness of the difference between her sex at birth and her gender identity — “has caused her to be suicidal, depressed, anxious, and angry,” and enforcement of the state’s ban “will have a traumatic effect that undermines her social transition.”