Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined 25 Republican attorneys general in a challenge to a federal court ruling allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
The coalition, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act likely violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Equal Protection Clause holds that the government cannot deny legal protections to people in similar situations or circumstances.
“Basing the distinction on biology rather than gender identity makes sense because it is the differences in biology—not gender identity—that call for separate teams in the first place: Whatever their gender identity, biological males are, on average, stronger and faster than biological females,” said the brief. “If those average physical differences did not matter, there would be no need to segregate sports teams at all.”
In 2020, Idaho became the first state to ban transgender women and girls from competing on female student athletic teams, kicking off a wave of similar laws in other states. Tennessee followed suit in 2021, banning participation in school sports by transgender boys and girls on teams that conform with their gender identity. The same year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and Lambda Legal filed suit against Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on behalf of teenage golfer Luc Esquival, a transgender boy banned from participating on his Knoxville high school golf team. The case has not been resolved yet.
This story was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.
