Iowa AG defends other states discriminating against trans athletes

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has now joined a group of states to defend laws discriminating against transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia.

Not content with the anti-trans-athlete laws passed in Iowa, Bird announced Tuesday that she joined two different legal movements to support other states’ efforts to ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.

In joining the 26-state coalition, Bird is showing she supports those states’ laws because Iowa has a similar law banning trans athletes.

“Idaho and West Virginia have every right to pass laws protecting young women and girls in sports, just as we led the charge to do here in Iowa,” she said in the release.

Idaho

The first was an Idaho law that bans trans girls from participating in sports on girls’ teams. The law allows anyone to question the sex of a female student athlete, and requires challenged athletes to prove their sex with medical tests like pelvic exams.

On Aug. 17, three judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction that has blocked the law since 2020. The judges ruled the law discriminates against all girls and women (trans or not) because any female student athlete’s gender could be challenged, and they would then be forced to have medical exams for “sex verification.”

Judges also found no evidence in Idaho of trans students receiving athletic scholarships over cisgender students.

Bird signed onto the argument that the question of trans girls competing at any level in girls’ sports should be addressed, as well as the argument that states aren’t required to consider gender identity the same thing as sex when it comes to sex discrimination.

That argument flies in the face of a 2020 US Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v Clayton County that found a sex discrimination ban in the Civil Rights Act includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

That reasoning has been applied by judges in other Title IX cases.

West Virginia

West Virginia is appealing to the US Supreme Court after the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled West Virginia’s ban on trans athletes violated the rights of a 13-year-old. That student, who has been on puberty blockers and identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, has played on girls’ teams since elementary school.

The appeals court blocked the state from kicking her off the middle school cross country team.

The bulk of the argument in this brief boils down to issues over how to interpret Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, and the West Virginia Constitution.

The challengers claim neither law requires West Virginia to “treat biological males as girls.”

Bird supports these arguments.

History of supporting anti-trans laws

Bird has signed on to other lawsuits and briefs about expanding discrimination protections, including one that would have protected all students “against discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”

She characterized that attempt as a “war on women.”