YOUTH
ADF Targets Trans Athletes in Connecticut Lawsuit
Conservatives escalate effort to ban transgender youth from playing sports
BY MATT TRACY
The ongoing campaign
against transgender
student-athletes took
another turn on February
12 when three Connecticutbased
cisgender student-athletes
and their parents, backed by
the notorious anti-LGBTQ legal
group Alliance Defending Freedom
(ADF), fi led a lawsuit in US District
Court in Connecticut alleging
that the kids’ “dreams and goals”
were thwarted because they had to
compete with trans athletes.
The ADF has launched a multidimensional
campaign to reverse
the state policy allowing transgender
high school athletes to compete
without restrictions. The ADF and
three other student-athletes fi led
a Title IX sex discrimination complaint
in June asking the federal
Offi ce of Civil Rights to investigate
their case and ban transgender
individuals from participating in
girls’ high school athletics. This
time they’re again claiming transgender
student-athletes’ participation
amounts to a violation of Title
IX, and they’re aiming their lawsuit
at the Connecticut Interscholastic
Conference and school boards
in Bloomfi eld, Cromwell, Glastonbury,
Danbury, and Canton.
“Unfortunately for Plaintiffs and
other girls in Connecticut, those
dreams and goals — those opportunities
Transgender student-athletes Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, seen here accepting honors at an
Athlete Ally event in Manhattan in November, were named — and misgendered — in a lawsuit alleging
that trans athletes enjoy an unfair advantage in sports.
for participation, recruitment,
and scholarships — are now
being directly and negatively impacted
by a new policy that is permitting
boys who are male in every
biological respect to compete in
girls’ athletic competitions if they
claim a female gender identity,”
stated the lawsuit, which deliberately
misgendered transgender
athletes.
The common thread in the Offi ce
of Civil Rights complaint and the
latest lawsuit is that both actions
stem from competitions in which
ATHLETE ALLY
those six cisgender student-athletes
participated in track matches
against Andraya Yearwood and
Terry Miller, a pair of talented
transgender girls whose success
has been derided by the far right
as illegitimate simply because they
are trans. Yearwood and Miller
have defended themselves in the
face of adversity, and they were
honored at Athlete Ally’s annual
awards event in Manhattan in November.
“I want everyone to be comfortable
being themselves,” Miller told
Gay City News before she was recognized
on that evening in November.
“Don’t be scared to participate
in sports, because we have rights,
too.”
The American Civil Liberties
Union has long stood behind Yearwood
and Miller. Chase Strangio,
a transgender attorney and deputy
director for Trans Justice with the
ACLU LGBT & HIV Project, accompanied
the girls at the Athlete Ally
awards.
Following the ADF’s recent
court fi ling, the ACLU announced
it would “be seeking to join this
lawsuit and defend the interest of
trans student athletes.”
Strangio also voiced strong
words of support for the girls.
“The complaint fi led in Connecticut
targeting the inclusion of
transgender girls in girls’ athletics
and specifi cally naming Terry Miller
and Andraya Yearwood is a dangerous
distortion of both law and
science in the service of excluding
trans youth from public life,”
Strangio said in a written statement.
“The purpose of high school
athletics is to support inclusion,
build social connection and teamwork,
and help all students thrive
and grow. Efforts to undermine
Title IX by claiming it doesn’t apply
to a subset of girls will ultimately
hurt all students and compromise
the work of ending the long legacy
of sex discrimination in sports.”
LGBTQ Dems to Lawmakers: Don’t Bail on Bail Reform
Conservatives, police unions have led charge to reverse new laws out of Albany
BY MATT TRACY
One day after the New York State Senate
appeared poised to renege on its
commitment to bail reform, LGBTQ
political groups from across the
state issued a stern warning to elected offi cials:
Do not compromise.
More than a half-dozen groups penned a letter
on February 13 in response to the news,
fi rst reported by Newsday, that Democratic lawmakers
were offering rollbacks to the recently
enacted law, which went into effect in January
and restricts judges from setting bail for most
misdemeanors and non-violent felonies.
The law also stipulates that judges should
not weigh defendants’ past criminal record, but
rather whether they are likely to return to court
CRIME
for trial.
The wavering Democrats in the Senate vow
to continue the bar on cash bail, but are looking
at ways to give judges more power to decide
whether to release an individual waiting for
trial and to expand the number of crimes that
can be used to justify holding a suspect. Other
➤ BAIL REFORM, continued on p.31
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