USA Powerlifting WILL allow trans athletes in women’s division after losing discrimination case

USA Powerlifting will now be forced to allow transgender athletes to compete in the women’s division after losing a multi-year discrimination lawsuit filed by a translifter.

JayCee Cooper, a transgender woman, first filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019, stating that the organization banned her from participating as a woman.

In 2021, Cooper filed an official lawsuit against USA Powerlifting in a state court, accusing the organization of discrimination.

This week, the organization was told “Cease and cease all unfair discriminatory practices” regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, a court ruling said. USA Powerlifting now has two weeks to reverse its former policy.

“The evil is in making someone pretend to be something else, with the implicit message that he is less than who he is. That is the essence of segregation and segregation, and that is what the MHRA prohibits,” the ruling reads.

USA Powerlifting has already expressed interest in appealing the decision, which was issued Monday.

President Larry Maile told KARE in Minneapolis that his organization disagrees with the court’s decision and will explore their options.

“We have received summary proceedings in which the court holds us liable for discrimination. We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusions. We are considering all our options, including an appeal,” Maile said.

“Our position is aimed at balancing the needs of cis and transgender women, whose abilities differ significantly in pure strength sports,” Maile continues.

Cooper’s lawsuit was filed in January 2021 alongside Gender Justice – a Minnesota-based advocacy group – after she said she was “fed up” with how she and other trans athletes were treated.

‘I was fed up with the way I was treated; I was fed up with the way my community was treated, and enough was enough,” Cooper shared CARD-TV.

She described to the Minnesota television station her feelings of relief now that a court has ruled in her favor.

“Mostly I feel relief,” Cooper said after Monday’s verdict. “I think we needed a win here, and it feels good to get it.”

Despite her win, Cooper says she has “complex feelings” about the sport after years of battling.

“After years of discrimination from USA Powerlifting and the backlash that has ensued, I naturally have complex feelings about the sport,” said Cooper.

“But I think this win – [it] is a representation of where we can move forward,” she continued in her interview with KARE-TV.

In the United States, the conversation of transgender athletes in women’s sports has become a hotly contested issue.

Last month, an appeals court resumed challenging Connecticut’s transgender athlete policy, which allows trans girls to participate in women’s high school sports.

That ruling went against a decision by a three-judge panel.

In the US, 18 states have it passed laws banning transgender women or girls from sports.

Proponents of the ban argue that transgender women — people who are born biologically male and then transition to female — have an unfair advantage.

In 2022, Louisiana became the eighteenth state to pass a ban on transgender athletes.

The bill was put into law after Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards failed to veto or sign the bill.

The law obliges schools to do so “Assign intercollegiate and interscholastic athletic teams based on the biological sex of the team members.”

Those against transgender sports bans to argue that the bans are a way of humiliating and excluding transgender athletes who “do not fit into culturally accepted conceptions of femininity.”