High-school female athlete, Christian teachers ask 6th Circuit to uphold privacy, free speech, fairness

WHO:  Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys

WHAT:  Available for media interviews following oral argument in State of Tennessee v. Cardona

WHEN:  Immediately following the hearing, which begins at 9 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, Oct. 30

WHERE:  U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, 8th Floor West Courtroom 805, 100 E. Fifth St., Cincinnati; or view the livestream. To schedule an interview, contact ADF Media Relations Specialist Hattie Troutman at (771) 200-7630.

CINCINNATI – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys will be available for media interviews Wednesday following oral arguments in State of Tennessee v. Cardona at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. ADF attorneys represent a West Virginia high-school female athlete and Christian Educators Association International in a lawsuit challenging the Biden-Harris administration’s unlawful attempt to change the meaning of “sex discrimination” in Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics, to include “gender identity.”

“The Biden-Harris administration’s radical attempt to redefine sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, undermines fairness, and threatens student safety, privacy, and free speech,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jake Warner, who will be arguing before the court. “The U.S. Supreme Court rightly upheld preliminary decisions halting the administration’s illegal efforts to rewrite Title IX. Our female student-athlete client has already suffered the humiliation and indignity of being harassed by a male student in the locker room and on her sports team. We are urging the 6th Circuit to uphold safety and fairness by keeping the administration’s flawed re-write of Title IX on ice while this case proceeds.”

On April 29, the Biden-Harris administration announced it would redefine “sex” in Title IX rules to include “gender identity,” requiring schools to disregard longstanding sex-based protections, which respect the biological differences between men and women, to accommodate “an individual’s sense of their gender.” Since then, ADF attorneys have joined several states, women’s groups, athletic associations, and school boards in achieving five injunctions that halt enforcement of the rule change in multiple jurisdictions that span the country as the lawsuits proceed.

In August, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the administration’s request to partially reinstate the rule change in this case and another case, U.S. Department of Education v. State of Louisiana. The Supreme Court’s decision upheld two federal appeals court rulings, including one by the 6th Circuit, that halted the administration’s unlawful rules in the states of Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho. Attorneys are yet again asking the 6th Circuit to keep those injunctions in place while this case proceeds.

The athlete client that ADF represents in the case is a 15-year-old girl in West Virginia who was forced to compete against a male athlete on her middle school track-and-field team. The male displaced her several times, even taking away her spot to compete in a conference championship. The male athlete was also given access to the girls’ locker room, and the ADF client had to endure vulgar, sexual comments that the athlete directed at her. The male athlete has finished ahead of nearly 300 female competitors in three years of competition on the girls’ team.

ADF attorneys also note that Tennessee and Kentucky have laws that protect the privacy and free speech of teachers who are members of Christian Educators Association International and teach in schools covered by Title IX. But those state laws and the protection they provide to ADF clients and people like them is threatened by the administration’s new Title IX rules.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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