Former high school track-and-field athlete Selena Soule filed a legal challenge to a Connecticut ruling regarding transgender students being allowed to participate in sports consistent with their preferred gender.
Soule and other female athletes who experienced competing with biological males when they were in high school first filed their lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools in 2020. The women alleged the state school board's policy of allowing transgender women to compete against their biological counterparts was a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has assisted Soule and other female athletes in the lawsuit. It is currently working to appeal the ruling of US District Court Judge Robert Chatigny, who dismissed the petition on procedural grounds.
Chatigny said there was no dispute to resolve because the two transgender athletes the plaintiffs complained about had graduated high school and they could not identify other female transgender athletes.
Soule Calls to Protect Girls in Sports
In an interview with Fox News, Soule urged fellow female athletes to join their fight to keep women's sports exclusive to biological females.
"Everybody who has encountered this issue needs to speak up and ask for fairness," she said. "[W]e need to protect every single girl in this country."
Also present in the interview was Alliance Defending Freedom's Christiana Kiefer, who serves as Soule's legal counsel. She said women were being robbed of athletic opportunities in their own sports because of the unfair physical advantage biological men possess.
"Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field, and what Selena experienced...was being sidelined in her own sport and that's a clear violation of Title IX," she said.
Hannah Arensman Retires from Competitive Cycling
Last week, 35-time national cyclocross champion Hannah Arensman announced her retirement from her sport after losing to Austin Killips, a transgender competitor in the previous season's women's championships.
She placed fourth in the final race of her career, flanked by two transgender podium finishers.
In a written statement to the Supreme Court, she earned her place in her family of athletes and followed her sister's footsteps in cyclocross racing. However, including transgender athletes in her sport did training and competing harder.
"[I]t has become increasingly discouraging to train as hard as I do only to have to lose to a man with the unfair advantage of an androgenized body that intrinsically gives him an obvious advantage over me, no matter how hard I train," she wrote.
Soule found her retirement at the young age of 25 "devastating" because they were "being forced to compete against biological males" who have a "barely mediocre" performance in the men's category.
"[I]t's a very, extremely frustrating situation," she said. "It should not be happening. Women's sports should be preserved as just women's sports."
