An appellate court says a national beauty pageant has the right to exclude a transgender woman from competing. A lawsuit filed by Anita Green says the pageant violated an Oregon state anti-discrimination law when it barred her from competing in 2019.
The 9th Circuit’s three-judge panel voted 2-1 in favor of the pageant organization, saying that forcing the pageant to include a transgender woman would fundamentally alter the message the pageant was trying to send.
The appellate court agreed with a lower court’s finding that someone viewing the pageant’s decision to exclude transgender women would likely understand that the pageant organizers did not believe transgender women qualified as female.“The First Amendment affords the Pageant the ability to voice this message, and to enforce its “natural born female” rule,” the appellate court found.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Susan P. Graber, said the majority skipped important steps when it decided whether the First Amendment applied. The court first should have considered whether the Oregon state law applied to the case, which might have resolved the lawsuit before the judges had to even consider the First Amendment question, Graber said.
Green referred The Associated Press to her attorney, Shenoa Payne, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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