Fox News ran an auspicious story this week, headlined:
“Federal judge sides with DeSantis on transgender athletes, upholds ban on biological males on female teams.”
It’s a terrific win, upholding Florida’s new law requiring sports teams to be segregated by biological sex, but it was actually a double victory.
Federal Judge Roy Altman (a Trump appointee) had stayed his case waiting for the Eleventh Circuit Court in Atlanta to rule on the appeal of a related Jacksonville case, which featured sex-segregated bathrooms instead of sports teams.
In the Eleventh Circuit bathroom case, a three-judge panel held that sex-segregated bathroom rules did not violate federal law, because Title IX’s reference to “sex” does not encompass “gender identity.” Sex is sex. Mental thoughts about sex are something else.
The bathroom holding was a giant victory for common sense, a significant legal precedent, and a Rosetta Stone for Judge Altman’s sports case.
In light of the ‘sex is sex’ ruling, Judge Altman un-stayed his case, and issued his own ruling upholding Florida’s new ban against cross-dressing players joining the other sex’s team.
For some reason, this phenomenon almost always involves boys trying to get on the girls’ team. It’s weird how you almost never hear about girls trying to join the boys’ sports teams.
It’s almost like there’s something inherent or intrinsic in biological … oh, never mind. I digress.
Judge Altman gave the plaintiffs a November 21st deadline to try to amend their complaint to show either (a) how “Title IX prohibits Florida from treating (plaintiff), a biological male, differently than biological females,” or (b) how the law subjects the plaintiff to “discriminatory animus.”
The plaintiff’s lawyers and the grotesque, government-funded non-profits pushing gender ideology are assessing their options.
Given the Eleventh’s Circuit’s ‘sex is sex’ bathroom ruling, an appeal seems fruitless. And since Judge Altman flatly described the plaintiff as a ‘biological male,’ he doesn’t seem especially receptive to all the emotional manipulation.
So amendment looks pretty futile, too.
