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NWLC Files Amicus Brief Defending Minnesota Human Rights Law
On August 30, 2024, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) led an amicus brief alongside 25 organizations committed to gender justice and our law firm partners, Covington & Burling LLP and Nigh, Godenberg, Raso & Vaughn, in Cooper v. USA Powerlifting, a case being considered by the Minnesota Supreme Court this fall.
NWLC filed this brief to support the plaintiff, amateur powerlifter JayCee Cooper. The brief urges the Court to honor a Minnesota civil rights law that prohibits businesses open to the public from turning away individuals based on protected characteristics like sex, race, national origin, or LGBTQI+ status. Public accommodation laws like Minnesota’s law are critical to ensure everyone can access public spaces and activities, including women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ people.
The Case
USA Powerlifting and its state affiliate host sporting events in Minnesota that are open to the public. JayCee Cooper registered to participate in a bench lifting competition and shared medical documents that disclosed her status as a transgender woman. USA Powerlifting immediately excluded JayCee from its lifting meets. It responded by inventing an explicitly discriminatory policy that categorically bars all trans women from participating in their powerlifting competitions. USA Powerlifting illegally discriminated under Minnesota’s human rights law. Its exclusion of JayCee and its policy echo the worst abuses of “sex testing” in competitive sports that have enforced sex stereotypes among women—disproportionately harming Black and brown women athletes and LGBTQI+ athletes, especially LGBTQI+ women of color who are the most likely to have their bodies and gender expressions policed.
When USA Powerlifting defended its discriminatory policy, it relied on baseless fearmongering and false claims that trans women “threaten” women’s sports, while ignoring the threats girls and women actually face in sports, whether they are transgender or cisgender. Those include:
- Forcing professional women athletes to fight in court for equal pay (even when the women’s teams are performing better) and fair work conditions compared to men athletes
- For example, the U.S. women’s national soccer team was paid much less for winning the World Cup than the U.S. men’s national team was paid for losing the World Cup.
- Second-class funding and resources for highly competitive college women’s teams
- Did you know Division I schools only spend $1 on women athletes for every $2 spent on men athletes?
- Sex harassment and assault targeting women athletes
- You may have read about high-profile legal cases like the one involving USA Gymnastics, but did you know 93% of student athlete survivors never report their experience?
These are real threats to women seeking community, fun, and challenge in the sports they love throughout their lives. Obviously, trans women are responsible for zero of these problems. In fact, these real threats also harm trans women, just like cisgender women. If USA Powerlifting genuinely wants to prevent sex discrimination, these real threats require attention. The gender justice movement has correctly maintained its focus on these key issues for many decades.
The district court agreed with Ms. Cooper and ruled USA Powerlifting’s anti-trans sports ban violated Minnesota law because of how it punishes women based on their queer and/or transgender status. But the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s decision and wrongly concluded that excluding a woman because her “physiology” is perceived as masculine is (somehow) not exclusion based on being queer and/or transgender. JayCee Cooper and her lawyers at Gender Justice now ask the Minnesota Supreme Court to reverse the Court of Appeals’ incorrect decision. Additionally, JayCee Cooper and Gender Justice ask the Minnesota Supreme Court to clarify that the district court reached the right decision in finding that Minnesota’s Human Rights Act does provide strong protections against exclusion and harassment for LGBTQI+ women, including trans, nonbinary, and intersex women, in sports, recreation, and other aspects of public life (like riding the bus or having lunch in a restaurant.)
Our Brief
Our amicus brief explains the deep connections between anti-trans sports bans, body policing (which disproportionately hurts Black and brown women), and situations where the government has sanctioned the enforcement of sex stereotypes that hurt all girls and women—women who are transgender, women who are intersex (people with natural, physical variations in sex-linked traits), and women who are cisgender (people whose gender fully aligns with their sex assigned at birth.)
Enforcing anti-trans sports bans often relies upon dangerous practices of “sex testing,” which has an appalling, queerphobic and racist history in competitive sports ranging from the Olympics to U.S. public schools. “Sex testing” refers to a spectrum of invasive, pseudoscientific practices that range from collecting sensitive medical documents to traumatizing genital examinations. Athletics bans especially target intersex women and Black and brown women (who face increased body policing and gender scrutiny based on racialized stereotypes of femininity.)
NWLC advocates for the rights of trans women, cis women, and all LGBTQI+ women because we know when the government allows businesses to mistreat people based on sex stereotypes, everybody loses. We will keep fighting for core civil rights protections in public spaces that support safety and freedom for all women. NWLC and our 25 supporting signatory organizations are asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to reverse the incorrect and dangerous Court of Appeals decision that buys into harmful sex stereotypes, to confirm that the district court correctly interpreted the state human rights law, and to protect JayCee Cooper and all LGBTQI+ women athletes from discrimination.
