Indiana school must allow transgender girl to rejoin softball team, judge rules

Brooke Migdon
·3 min read
27

Story at a glance

  • A transgender 10-year-old will continue playing on her school’s all-girls softball team despite a state law preventing transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, a judge ruled Tuesday.

  • Indiana’s House Bill 1041 likely violates Title IX and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, according to a preliminary injunction.

  • Under the law, which took effect July 1, school sports teams in Indiana are required to be designated according to the athletes’ sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) from enforcing a state law preventing transgender athletes from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity, siding with a transgender 10-year-old that was forced off her school’s all-girls softball team after the law took effect this month.

U.S. District Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson issued the preliminary injunction, finding that Indiana’s House Bill 1041, which went into effect July 1, likely violates Title IX and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that discriminating against an individual for being transgender constitutes sex discrimination.

In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana in May, the group argued on behalf of a 10-year-old transgender girl – identified pseudonymously in the complaint as A.M. – that the state’s transgender athlete ban was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

According to the complaint, A.M. had been permitted to play on her school’s girl’s softball team last school year, but was informed by IPS once the law took effect that she is no longer able to participate because she is transgender.

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A.M. informed her family that she was a girl before her fourth birthday, and has consistently used her preferred female first name and pronouns, according to the lawsuit. She has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and is currently taking a puberty blocker.

In her order on Tuesday, Magnus-Stinson wrote that A.M.’s challenge to the lawfulness of House Bill 1041 “raises controversial issues regarding the boundaries of Title IX and whether and how those boundaries should stretch and shift in an ever-changing world.”

Magnus-Stinson added that A.M. has shown that she has a “likelihood of succeeding on the merits of her claim.”

Under Indiana’s House Bill 1041, school sports teams are required to be designated according to the athletes’ sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.

“A male, based on a student’s biological sex at birth in accordance with the student’s genetics and reproductive biology, may not participate on an athletic team or sport designated under this section as being a female, women’s, or girls’ athletic team or sport,” the bill reads. It does not include a similar provision for transgender students assigned female at birth.

The measure was passed by the state legislature in March but vetoed by Indiana’s Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, shortly after. In May, Indiana lawmakers voted to override Holcomb’s veto, joining 16 other states in banning transgender students from athletics.

Sponsors of the Indiana bill – and others like it – have argued that such legislation is needed to preserve the integrity of women’s sports and protect cisgender female athletes from having competitive athletic opportunities taken away from them.

Following the legislature’s override of the governor’s veto, Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray called the measure “a matter of simple fairness.” He added that legal challenges were expected.

“We don’t like to get to the state of Indiana sued, but it happens from time to time,” he said. “It’s a policy that I think we can stand behind.”

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