The Human Rights Campaign has filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s ban on transgender women athletes and says it plans challenges in other states, including Arkansas.

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The 2021 Arkansas legislature passed two laws aimed at preventing transgender women from participating in athletics. One banned them from grade school through college. The other law allows lawsuits against schools that permit transgender women to compete.

The lawsuit in Florida was brought on behalf of a 13-year-old girl. To date, no case has emerged publicly of transgender female participation in Arkansas athletics.

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An HRC release about the Florida plaintiff and the larger issue said:

“It is a very helpless feeling to know that people think our daughter does not deserve the rights to play sports with her friends—she has been playing with them for the last seven years and it has not been an issue,” said Jessica and Gary. “Taking this right away will only further isolate her from her peers and take away her ‘safe space.’ She is just a girl that wants to play sports with her friends and be part of a team. As her parents, we just want her to be happy.”

HRC’s lawsuit asserts a number of legal arguments including that the law is in clear violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972; Title IX expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, in any education program or activity offered by a recipient of federal financial assistance. The Department of Justice also recently announced that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in federally-funded education institutions. The lawsuit also asserts that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. More information regarding the upcoming legal challenges in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee will be announced throughout the year.

As the rash of transgender sports ban laws in states across the country have increased, lawmakers who supported the bills have failed to provide examples of any issue in their states to attempt to justify these attacks on transgender youth, laying bare the reality that they are fueled by discriminatory intent and not supported by fact. The nation’s leading child health and welfare groups representing more than 7 million youth-serving professionals and more than 1,000 child welfare organizations released an open letter calling for lawmakers in states across the country to oppose legislation that target LGBTQ people, and transgender children in particular.

Another Arkansas law targeting transgender people is already subject of a court lawsuit — the ban on gender-affirming care for transgender children.

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