On SCOTUS, Title IX, & Fairness in Sports

The Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia vs. BPJ allows states to bypass Title IX’s protections against sex-based discrimination when it comes to sports. This flies in the face of the last decade of law and understanding: civil rights for sex and gender cannot be separated from each other. 

This ruling does not change Maine’s hard-fought protections for all youth - because we know that attacking gender identity is an attack on all women and girls.From our bodily autonomy, to our right to express our gender however we wish, limiting trans girls from the safety and fairness we all deserve is a limit upon us all, and opens up all women and girls to harassment and exclusion based on how they are perceived. 

These bans give license for everyone to monitor and meddle, sowing division, and opening our schools up to lawsuits and vigilante inspectors, like in Boston last spring, when a woman was forced out of a hotel bathroom because she didn’t look feminine enough to use the women’s restroom; like in Minnesota last August, a teen girl was forced to show her breasts to prove she could use the bathroom in a restaurant; like in Florida this winter, when a woman working in a large department store was harassed by a customer for being 6’4” and therefore too tall to be a woman - when she complained, she was fired. 

Women and girls face real challenges in sports, which are not addressed by bans limiting or denying trans youth participation.  Bans on trans athletes are a distraction from these very real issues of fairness in sports, and real issues of gender-based discrimination. Female athletes have long faced inequities in sports, including unequal access to facilities, racism, lack of funding, unequal pay, and pervasive sexual abuse of student athletes by doctors and coaches. 

Here in Maine, our inclusive policy will continue to ensure that all kids can play, and that all students are protected from discrimination based on sex and gender. And we will continue our work alongside allies to protect these policies and our community as a whole. We also will continue to work for free and fair courts, who understand that their highest role is to ensure that all of us have the rights we deserve, no matter where we live.