LGBT Organization Sues to Block Florida Law that Protects Women’s Sports

As it had promised, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBT activist organization, has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Florida’s new law, called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” violates federal education statutes as well as the U.S. Constitution. The new law declares that one’s biological sex at birth will define who can play on boys and girls sports teams at public high schools and colleges and universities in the state. 

HRC, which has also promised additional lawsuits challenging similar laws in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, describes the Florida law as “ironically” titled, and repeats the current talking point of transgender ideology that “a transgender woman is a woman.”

“SB 1028, ironically titled the ‘Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,’ has nothing to do with fairness or equality for girls or women in sports. By excluding transgender girls and women from girls sports teams and forcing them, if they want to play sports at all, to join a team that matches neither their gender identity nor their current physical status, the bill discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status in violation of the United States Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq,” the federal lawsuit states.

While it is true that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled – in Bostock v. Clayton County – that the definition of “sex” under federal employment nondiscrimination laws can include gender identity, the justices left open the question whether the same reasoning it used in the employment context should now apply to Title IX, which was specifically passed in 1972 to afford women equal opportunities in education. And that law was specifically designed to remedy the disparity in funding between men’s and women’s sports.

Title IX specifically allows schools receiving federal funding to segregate teams and facilities on the basis of sex. That in itself is a recognition of the biological differences between men and women.

The current administration has sided with the position HRC has taken, asserting that Title IX’s use of the word “sex” includes transgender women – i.e., biological men.

It has been apparent in states like Connecticut, for example, where transgender women are allowed to compete in women’s sports, that they dominate the competition, taking trophies, scholarships and opportunities away from biological women who can’t compete against biological males who enjoy inherent advantages of strength, speed and endurance.

It would appear that what HRC is arguing for in the Florida lawsuit is directly contrary to the original purpose of Title IX. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Supreme Court will agree.

The Bible tells us that God made us in His image, and that image includes “male and female,” Genesis 1:27 (ESV). But that does not mean that God is androgynous, or that his image bearers – men and women – can choose their sex. Gender dysphoria – when your emotional and psychological identity doesn’t match the biological sex you were born with – is a real phenomenon that must be treated with grace and compassion in order for boys, girls, men and women to accept who God created them to be.

The world offers the lie that boys can be girls and men can be women, and vice versa. God offers his Son, and the healing and love of the Father that accompanies a life committed to Christ. Pray for those dealing with gender dysphoria, and that the truth of God’s creation of male and female would carry the day in this legal case.

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