On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge and Trump appointee Ron K. Altman tossed out a lawsuit challenging Florida's Fairness in Women's Sports Act, signed into law in 2021 by Governor Ron DeSantis. The Florida law banned males from competing in women's sports and was challenged by the Human Rights Campaign which claimed that it violated the 14th Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments. Judge Altman found that argument unconvincing.
"In addition to allowing transgender athletes of both sexes to play on coed (or mixed) teams, the law explicitly allows transgender boys to try out and play for boys' sports teams," the judge wrote. "If the law had intended to discriminate against transgender student-athletes, in other words, it's done a very poor job of it."
Altman ruled that the Fairness in Women's Sports Act "doesn't violate Title IX by treating transgender girls differently from transgender boys."
"Having carefully reviewed the text of SB 1028, the statements of the various politicians quoted in the Complaint, and the Plaintiff's other factual allegations, we disagree that the statute comes anywhere close to creating the sort of caste-like system the Constitution forbids—a system in which transgender girls are legally demeaned and degraded because of their gender identity," the judge's motion read.
This is a win for fairness, sanity, and good sense.
If a boy wants to wear a skirt and claim to be a girl, plenty of folks think it's weird, but as long as that young person minds his own business, most folks will shrug and get on with their lives. But this entire trend of "trans girls are girls and should be on girls' sports teams" flies in the face of equal treatment under the law, as well as Biology 101 and common sense. The Human Rights Campaign, who filed the suit challenging the Florida statute, tried to make the equal treatment claim but failed, as was only just and right; there is no equal treatment issue here. Boys in Florida are free to play on boy's sports teams and girls on girls' teams, regardless of their gender identity. As has been amply illustrated, allowing boys to compete on girls' sports teams is hideously unfair, and in a country where many young people compete for college sports scholarships as a way of paying for their education, such policies actually deprive young women of opportunities to which only they are entitled.
This decision by Judge Altman was proper and was acknowledged as such by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
"Biological differences matter. As more women lose opportunities to men with natural physical advantages, lawmakers are acting to preserve equal opportunities and common sense. If men are allowed to compete in women's sports, women will continue to face discrimination that Title IX prohibits," (Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Christiana) Kiefer added.
All too often, the pet agendas of the left seem to fly in the face of not only good sense but even reality. The reality here is that boys and girls, men and women, are different. We are a species that exhibits sexual dimorphism; that is to say, males and females have biological differences that are easy to observe. In the case of humans, men are typically larger, stronger, and faster than women, with more muscle mass as a percentage of body weight. Men can function after traumatic injury better than women in most cases, and men's larger lung capacity and larger hearts give them more endurance. These things are obvious to anyone with eyes to see them, and we can compare other species to see just how obvious it is; for example, wolves show a lower level of sexual dimorphism than humans, while gorillas show a much higher level, but on that spectrum, humans are closer to the latter than the former. Those are facts, and we've seen all too often lately that the left isn't much for noticing or even acknowledging facts. These are objective realities, confirmed by serious research.
The researchers found that, although the transgender women had about the same testosterone levels as the cisgender women, they had about 40% greater skeletal muscle mass. Moreover, they were about 19% stronger and had 20% greater cardiopulmonary capacity. Interestingly, transgender women’s athletic markers generally fell right in the middle between cisgender men and women.
Day after day, it seems the left has less and less connection with objective reality. On this issue, many on the left aren't even within shouting distance. This was a good decision. It is as yet unknown if the Human Rights Campaign will seek to pursue this further, but for the moment, good sense and scientific reality have prevailed. Let's hope for more decisions of this kind.
