Despite the 7-0 decision, the ruling is a narrow one and sends the case back to a lower court to decide whether the sports organization has a legitimate business reason for banning transgenders from women’s competition.
[UPDATE] The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that USA Powerlifting discriminated against a male athlete by barring him from competing in a women’s competition, marking a major decision in the ongoing debate over transgender participation in women’s sports.
The court’s decision last Wednesday found that the organization’s policy of explicitly excluding men identifying as women from women’s events violated Minnesota’s Human Rights Act. All seven justices agreed with the ruling. Five were appointed by current Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and two by former Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.
However, this wasn’t an outright win for the transgender movement, as the justices also ruled that USA Powerlifting has a right to try to argue in court that it has a legitimate business interest in banning transgenders from women’s competition.
The case began in 2021 when a transgender-identifying athlete JayCee Cooper sued USA Powerlifting after the group rejected his application to compete in a women’s division event in 2018. He had previously competed in male competition under his birthname, Joel Cooper. His lawsuit claimed the organization’s policy discriminated based on gender identity, in violation of state law.
In 2023, a lower court initially sided with Cooper and ordered the organization to allow transgenders to compete in women’s divisions. The Minnesota Court of Appeals later ruled that “genuine issues of fact” remained over whether the exclusion was based on transgender identity or a legitimate business rationale.
USA Powerlifting has cited scientific research showing that male powerlifters have an up to 67 percent strength advantage over females. Cooper, formerly named Joel, competed as a male in various sports until he was 28 years old, when he announced that he identified as a woman.
After agreeing to hear the case in July 2024, the state’s Supreme Court has now reversed the appellate decision, ruling that “USA Powerlifting’s policy at the time of the decision was to categorically exclude transgender women from competing in the women’s division.”
Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote, “Because USA Powerlifting’s facially discriminatory policy provides direct evidence of discriminatory motive, there is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether Cooper’s transgender status actually motivated USA Powerlifting’s decision to prohibit Cooper from competing. We therefore reverse the part of the court of appeals’ decision on this issue.”
She added, “We agree with Cooper that USA Powerlifting’s policy is discriminatory on its face; there is therefore no genuine dispute that USA Powerlifting discriminated against Cooper because of her transgender status.”
The justices sent part of the case back to a lower court to determine whether USA Powerlifting has a “legitimate business purpose” for excluding transgender athletes from women’s competition categories, indicating there could be additional court rulings on the issue.
USA Powerlifting has defended its policy as necessary to maintain competitive fairness. The organization argues that allowing men who identify as women to compete against biological females creates an uneven playing field.
“Our goal at USAPL is to create rules and a framework that uphold the principles of fair play, not to exclude anyone,” USA Powerlifting President Larry Maile said in a statement last year. “To support trans athletes, USAPL created an open MX division in 2021 to serve all gender identities, including transgender and nonbinary members. The organization welcomes trans referees in all competitions, open or otherwise.”
Maile added, “Since science shows those who were born biologically male have a profound physical advantage over female-born athletes, our responsibility is to define legitimate categories to fairly place athletes within them.”
Attorneys for the organization described the ruling as a “partial victory for both sides,” according to The Independent, noting that the lower court will now decide whether USA Powerlifting’s policy serves a legitimate business purpose.
The Supreme Court’s decision sparked sharp criticism from Minnesota Republicans, who said it undermines protections for female athletes. In a statement, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth said,
“For decades, women and girls fought tirelessly for the rights guaranteed under Title IX. Sadly, those hard-won protections have increasingly come under attack, and today’s decision marks another setback in the fight to protect girls’ sports. This issue is ultimately about safety and fairness, and Minnesotans overwhelmingly agree that their daughters and granddaughters should not be forced to compete against boys.”
The ruling leaves open questions about how athletic organizations in Minnesota and across the country will navigate future policies on transgender participation in women’s sports. This issue continues to divide lawmakers and athletic groups nationwide.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
{Published March 9, 2023} A Minnesota court has ruled that USA Powerlifting must allow biological males to compete in women’s competitions, claiming that barring transgender athletes from competing is discrimination.Top of Form
The suit was brought in 2019 by transgender powerlifter JayCee Cooper, 35, who was born male. He began identifying as a female in his late 20s to compete in roller derby, which allowed transgenders to compete against biological women. After suffering an injury that made it more difficult to compete in roller derby, Cooper applied for membership with USA Powerlifting.
The organization rejected the application, so Cooper filed the lawsuit, claiming that USA Powerlifting’s barring of biological males who identified as female from competing against women violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
The organization’s policy did require competitors in the women’s division to be biologically female. In 2021, after Cooper’s suit was filed, the organization added an MX division for both men and women.
Nonetheless, the court ruled in Cooper’s favor, finding that he was discriminated against based on “protected status.” Ramsey County District Court Judge Patrick Diamond wrote:
The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than. That is the very essence of separation and segregation, and it is what the MHRA [Minnesota Human Rights Act] prohibits.”
He ordered USA Powerlifting to “cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices,” as well as to revise its policies within two weeks.
The ruling means that the organization must allow Cooper and any other biologically male athletes who say they are female to compete in the women’s division. What’s more, Diamond in his opinion did not acknowledge any inherent physical differences between men and women nor did he suggest that male athletes needed to meet any entry conditions, such as having to be on estrogen or other medications that help lower natural testosterone levels.
USA Powerlifting President Larry Maile voiced his opposition to the ruling by saying,
“Our position has been aimed at balancing the needs of cis- and transgender women whose capacities differ significantly in purely strength sports. We have received a summary judgment decision from the Court finding us liable for discrimination. We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusions. We are considering all of our options, including appeal.”
Paul Bossi, president of 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation, said that his organization once let a “changed-gender female” compete and the result was four world records broken. He warned that this ruling, which completely discounts the inherent strength and physical differences between men and women, endanger women’s sports altogether, saying,
“I’m pretty upset about it. A lot of the female powerlifters in our organization are pretty upset about this. The women worked really, really hard to get where they are and this change here, it’s going to destroy not just powerlifting, but it’s going to trickle down and destroy other sports as well…There’s a reason why there’s Title IX. There’s a reason why there’s male and female divisions in everything. Men are naturally stronger, they get 67% more muscle mass on them. Naturally, they have testosterone which is a muscle-inducing chemical that your body releases.”
April Hutchinson, a powerlifter for Team Canada, responded to the ruling by saying,
“The women in powerlifting, we’re outraged, we’re angry, we’re hurt, we’re offended, we’re basically every emotion except for happy.”
When asked by Fox News’s Todd Piro how hard it would be for a woman to defeat a biological male in powerlifting, Hutchinson replied, “It’s basically impossible.” She added that a male in her age range of similar lifting experience would outlift her “just due to physiological differences like muscle mass, muscle fiber, fast twitch, bone density, handprint.”
Marshi Smith, a former NCAA champion in swimming, a sport that has also grappled with the transgender issue, chimed in on the ruling. She said,
“It seems like we’re entering into an unenlightenment era now where truth no longer prevails. The judges in the country should be seeking on a quest for truth and for justice. To imply that women should be able to overcome, for example, in the sport of powerlifting, a 30% to 60% male advantage in the sport, it is outrageous and to try to attribute this enormous gap to better coaching or training facilities, is really insulting to women.”
In his ruling, Judge Diamond chided USA Powerlifting for forcing JayCee Cooper, who up until a few years ago was known as “Joel Cooper,” to “pretend to be something different.”
By this standard, a fully-abled athlete should be allowed to compete in the Special Olympics or Paralympics by simply saying that they “identify” as “disabled” and an adult baseball player who says they are in touch with their inner child could insist on playing in Little League. By Diamond’s logic, barring any of them from doing so would be the “very essence of separation and segregation.”
In reality, the only pretending being done here is by the male athletes claiming to be women so they can compete successfully at elite and professional levels and garner all the glory and financial benefits that come with it. It’s been seen in multiple sports: An average or even subpar male athlete who can’t win against other males decides to “identify” as a woman and suddenly they break records, steal championships, earn scholarships and sponsorships, and garner praise.
These men are not brave, they are cowards. Men who claim to be women so they can compete against women, winning only because of their overwhelming physiological advantages, are not to be held up as role models or victims. Instead, they should be viewed as examples of how men should not act. Some men who identify as women may truly believe they are women, and we should have compassion and pray for them, but aiding and abetting them in the quest to compete unfairly against weaker competitors is not compassion, it is harmful.
Regardless of one’s stance on a person’s transgender status or their right to go through life as the opposite gender, there is no “right” for transgenders to compete with an unfair advantage. Performance-enhancing drugs are banned in sports and those who use them are punished and rightly viewed as cheaters, yet a biological male competing as a female has far more advantages than performance-enhancing drugs could ever give.
Proverbs 9:10 says,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
An awed respect of the Lord is necessary to have wisdom and understanding. What greater evidence could there be that our nation has now utterly and completely rejected God?
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