Is it fair for biological boys to compete athletically against biological girls? Of course not, but it’s happening.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a complaint with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights on behalf of three Connecticut high school girls who have personally experienced the consequences of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s (CIAC) ridiculous policy permitting boys to compete against girls.
Page 54 of the CIAC’s handbook contains a section on transgender participation. The policy leaves it up to each student and their school to determine a student’s gender identity. If the school says that a boy is really a girl, then the CIAC will permit that boy to compete in female sports.
The handbook states that “the school district shall determine a student’s eligibility to participate in a CIAC gender specific sports team based on the gender identification of that student in current school records and daily life activities in the school and community at the time that sports eligibility is determined for a particular season.”
ADF lodged the complaint on behalf of three female track competitors and explained that the CIAC policy negatively impacts girls in multiple ways:
This discriminatory policy is now regularly resulting in boys displacing girls in competitive track events in Connecticut—excluding specific and identifiable girls including Complainants from honors, opportunities to compete at higher levels, and public recognition critical to college recruiting and scholarship opportunities that should go to those girls.
ADF also pointed out the concrete examples of two biological males, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, noting that “Between them, they have taken 15 women’s state championship titles (titles held in 2016 by ten different Connecticut girls) and have taken more than 40 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone.”
A June 2018 article stated that “Both athletes have begun hormone therapy and said for the most part they’ve been welcomed by family, friends, coaches and administrators with open arms.”
“I am a girl and I am a runner,” Terry Miller said according to The Hartford Courant. “I participate in athletics just like my peers to excel, find community and meaning in my life. It is both unfair and painful that my victories have to be attacked and my hard work ignored.”
“I have known two things for most of my life: I am a girl and I love to run,” Andraya Yearwood declared in a statement according to The Hartford Courant. “There is no shortage of discrimination that I face as a young black woman who is transgender. I have to wake up every day in a world where people who look like me face so many scary and unfair things.”
Part of a written statement from CIAC Executive Director Glenn Lungarini said, “we believe that the current CIAC policy is appropriate under both Connecticut law and Title IX.”
Selina Soule, the only one of the three complainants that ADF identified by name, recently appeared on the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with ADF’s Christiana Holcomb.
