A Christian legal organization is coming to the defense of a female high school athlete who was denied the ability to compete in a girls’ regional track championship after two spots were given to boys who identify as transgender.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group that’s known for its extensive record of winning landmark religious liberty cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, is defending high school runner Selina Soule, who placed eighth in a 55-meter dash at the Connecticut indoor track championships earlier this year.
Soule was expecting to be able to compete in the 55-meter race at the New England regionals, an event attended by college scouts looking for athletes to recruit, but she was knocked out of qualifying because the two top spots were given to male athletes who identify as female.
Soule, who would have made the cut as the sixth qualifying runner to compete in the regional event had the boys not been given the top spots, maintains that her civil rights have been violated.
The 16 year old is now filing a federal complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights which enforces Title IX, the federal statute that protects people from sex-based discrimination in the educational arena and its affiliated programs and activities, like school athletics, which receive government funding.
“No one in the state of Connecticut is happy about this, but no one has enough courage to speak up,” Soule told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview that aired Monday night.
“I haven’t been the only one affected by this,” she added. “There have been countless other female athletes in the state of Connecticut, as well as my entire indoor track team. We missed out on winning the state open championship because of the team that the transgender athlete was on.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is asking the Education Department to investigate and “restore a level playing field” for the Connecticut teenager, according to ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb.
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has implemented a protocol “that allows biological males who claim female identity to compete in girls’ athletic events,” according to Soule’s complaint. Thus, “boys have consistently deprived [Selina] Soule and the other female athletes of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels,” it reads.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter
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