The Minnesota appeals court handed a win to USA Powerlifting in its legal fight with a transgender athlete, sending the case back to the lower court to determine whether the male-to-female lifter was banned from the women’s category over her transgender status or physical advantages.
Minnesota Court of Appeals Judge Matthew Johnson said the district court “erred” when it ruled in February 2023 that USA Powerlifting violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act by excluding transgender lifter JayCee Cooper from the women’s division in 2019.
“The district court reasoned that USAPL has no evidence of a legitimate business purpose because USAPL does not have a legitimate non-discriminatory reason for its decision,” said Judge Johnson in his 32-page opinion issued Monday.
“But we have concluded above that USAPL’s asserted reason for its decision — that it excluded Cooper from the women’s division of its competitions because she has male physiology, which would give her an unfair competitive advantage over athletes with female physiology — is a non-discriminatory reason,” he said.
The court’s 2-1 decision represented a victory for USA Powerlifting, which closed up shop in Minnesota last year after a district judge ordered it to revise its transgender policy and then rejected its proposed revisions, which would have set a testosterone limit for male-born lifters in the women’s category.
Judge Johnson said state law bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, but not “from excluding a transgender woman from the women’s division of a strength-based athletic competition on the ground that she has male physiology, which gives her significant competitive advantages over cisgender women.”
As a result, “USAPL’s exclusion of Cooper from the women’s division of its competition is neither per se discrimination, facially discriminatory, nor discrimination as a matter of law.”
He sent the case back to the district court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
The decision came as a setback for Ms. Cooper, but Jess Braverman, legal director for Gender Justice, said she believed her client would prevail at the district court.
“The Court of Appeals affirmed that it is illegal to discriminate against transgender people in sports, but sent the case back down for trial to determine whether that is what happened here,” said Braverman. “We believe that it is crystal clear that JayCee Cooper experienced exactly this kind of discrimination, and we are confident that the courts will ultimately agree.”
The plaintiff did not ask us to be put out of business in Minnesota. Ramsey County Judge, Patrick Diamond, independently and of his own volition issued this ruling - ordering us to cease doing business in the state of Minnesota. #Powerlifting pic.twitter.com/mWGalGJFP3
— USA Powerlifting (@USAPowerlifting) April 16, 2023
Cooper sued in 2021 after USA Powerlifting rejected her bid to compete in the women’s division, telling her in an email that “Male-to-female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females in our static strength sport as it is a direct competitive advantage.”
USA Powerlifting sought to include transgender athletes in 2020 by offering a third division for all lifters called MX, but Ramsey County Judge Patrick Diamond said such categories are “the very essence of separation and segregation and it is what the MHRA prohibits.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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