In addition to her excellent majority opinion (which I summarized here) in Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote a special concurrence that addressed “the effect that a departure from a biological understanding of ‘sex’ under Title IX—i.e., equating ‘sex’ to ‘gender identity’ or ‘transgender status’—would have on girls’ and women’s rights and sports.” In a very long footnote (footnote 28 on pp. 59-61) in her dissent, Judge Jill Pryor disputes Lagoa on sports. The contrast is revealing.
Crediting Title IX for what one scholar calls “a virtual revolution for girls and women in sports,” Judge Lagoa argues that “a commingling of the biological sexes in the female athletics arena would significantly undermine the benefits afforded to female student athletes under Title IX’s allowance for sex-separated sports teams.” As she explains (with supporting citations), “it is neither myth nor outdated stereotype that there are inherent differences between those born male and those born female and that those born male, including transgender women and girls, have physiological advantages in many sports”:
For example, in comparison to biological females, biological males have: “greater lean body mass,” i.e., “more skeletal muscle and less fat”; “larger hearts,” “both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass”; “higher cardiac outputs”; “larger hemoglobin mass”; larger maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max), “both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass”; “greater glycogen utilization”; “higher anaerobic capacity”; and “different economy of motion.” These physical differences cut directly to the “main physical attributes that contribute to elite athletic performance,” as recognized by sports science and sports medicine experts. In tangible performance terms, studies have shown that these physical differences allow post-pubescent males to “jump (25%) higher than females, throw (25%) further than females, run (11%) faster than females, and accelerate (20%) faster than females” on average. The largest performance gap may be seen “in the area of strength.” Studies also have shown that males “are able to lift 30% more than females of equivalent stature and mass,” as well as punch with significantly greater force than females.
Importantly, scientific studies indicate that transgender females, even those who have undergone testosterone suppression to lower their testosterone levels to within that of an average biological female, retain most of the puberty-related advantages of muscle mass and strength seen in biological males. [Citations omitted.]
Judge Jill Pryor offers a stew of confused responses to Lagoa. First, she somehow contends that “there is no empirical data supporting the fear that transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports in any way undermines the experience and benefits of sports to cisgender girls.” But in addition to the empirical data that Lagoa presents and that Pryor does not contest, there is the data of championships and races won by so-called transgender females such as college swimmer Lia (fka Will) Thomas and high-school sprinter Andraya Yearwood. On what possible basis can Pryor maintain that, for those female athletes who lost to Thomas or Yearwood, such losses did not “undermine[] the experience and benefits of sports”?
Pryor goes on to assert that because “there will never be many transgender girls who participate in girls’ sports,” boys who identify as girls will not “so overwhelm girls’ sports programs with competitive advantages as to undermine the value of girls’ sports for cisgender girls.” Even if she is right that boys will not “overwhelm girls’ sports programs” in the aggregate, that doesn’t change the reality that the “value of girls’ sports” will be undermined for some admittedly unquantifiable number of girls.
Pryor thinks it meaningful to point out that “an abundance of biological differences has always existed among cisgender girls and women” and even observes that “something as simple as being left-handed may offer a significant competitive advantage in some sports, and yet we do not handicap or ban left-handed girls in Title IX-funded programs.” But to compare biological differences among females and left-handedness, on the one hand, to differences between males and females, on the other, is to disparage the very existence of girls’ and women’s sports as a coherent category.
It gets even worse:
What is more, Judge Lagoa’s concurrence fails to acknowledge the value that inclusion of transgender girls may have on girls’ sports, both to trans- and cisgender girls. It is well documented that the primary beneficiaries of Title IX have been white girls from socioeconomically-advantaged backgrounds. Integration into girls’ sports of girls, including transgender girls, who may have gone without such historical privileges, undoubtedly would benefit the whole of girls’ sports. [Emphasis added; citation omitted.]
Ah, so having guys compete against girls will strike a blow against white privilege! Only an unhinged ideologue could assert that this “undoubtedly would benefit the whole of girls’ sports.”
(There is plenty more in Judge Pryor’s dissent to indicate that she is indeed an unhinged ideologue—e.g., her bizarre claim that “gender identity is an immutable, biological component of a person’s sex.”)