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Miss United States of America LLC cannot be forced to allow transgender women to compete in its pageants, according to a new U.S. appeals court ruling.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the beauty pageant companycan legally excludecontestants that are not “natural born” females under their First Amendment rights, per the ruling.
Green argued that the company’s decision was in violation of an anti-discrimination law in Oregon. But in Wednesday’s 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel sided with Miss United States of America.
“Miss United States of America expresses its message in part through whom it chooses as its contestants, and the First Amendment affords it the right to do so,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke said in Wednesday’s ruling.
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“Ignoring the biological reality that men and women are different harms women and their opportunities to compete, excel, and win — from female athletes sidelined in their own sports to women competing in beauty pageants on the national stage,” Kiefer says.
Green’s attorney did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Greenfiled her lawsuitagainst Miss United States of America LLC in 2019 after her application was rejected, claiming that it was based on her gender identity, according toThe Hill.
Miss United States of America, which is separate from the Miss USA pageants, requires contestants to meet a number of criteria before competing, including that contestants be “a natural born female,” per the court.
(Kataluna Enriquez, a transgender woman who was crowned Miss Nevada, became thefirst openly transgender Miss USA contestantin 2021.)
In an 2019 interview with NPR, Green said she believesforbidding transgender womenfrom competing the Miss United States of America pageants is “very arbitrary.”
“I don’t think someone shouldn’t be allowed to compete simply because they are transgender,” Green explained, adding, “Transgender women are equal to cisgender women.”
A federal judge dismissed Green’s suit in 2021, according to Reuters, leading to her recent appeal.
“The Pageant would not be able to communicate ‘the celebration of biological women’ if it were forced to allow Green to participate,” Van Dyke said in Wednesday’s ruling.
source: people.com
