Recently, I reported on the Alaska School Activities Association's (ASAA) amending of their bylaws to ensure that only actual girls play on girls' sports teams in Alaska schools. While some likely thought this closed the issue here in the Great Land, the Alaska ACLU has now tossed its dime in, and there's a twist.
In Kenai, a young girl who likes to think of herself as a boy may be the ACLU’s plaintiff in an upcoming lawsuit, because she is not allowed to compete as a runner on the boys track team.
In September, the ACLU of Alaska sent a letter on behalf of what it calls a transgender middle school student-athlete on the Kenai Peninsula who has been told she can’t compete on the boys’ cross-country team.
This fall, the student* joined the cross-country running team, a non-contact sports team open to all cisgender seventh graders without an athletic tryout. The student loves running and loves the team; being part of it has been a crucial aspect of their adjustment to seventh grade and their new school. Their mother has described cross-country running as ‘bringing a new light into [their] life,'” the ACLU of Alaska’s attorney wrote, calling other girls who are not transgender by the new insult label “cisgender.”
Now, after the by-law change, the ACLU has found a loophole.
This week, the Alaska School Activities Association, which is a coordinating and governing body for high school sports in Alaska, passed a bylaw that brings it in line with regulations from the State of Alaska School Board. The board has come down on the side of protecting students in a way that is fair to both boys and girls. But the ASAA does not govern athletics at the middle school level, leaving the Kenai Peninsula School District vulnerable to a lawsuit.
“Blocking the student from participating in middle school athletics violates the School District’s own policies. Although the ASAA’s (Alaska School Activities Association) bylaws and policies apply statewide to member schools’ high school-level sports and activities, ASAA bylaws make clear that ASAA does not regulate athletics at the middle school level. The KPBSD Middle School Handbook SY 2023-24 contains no specific policies regarding transgender or non-binary student-athletes. It does not even authorize the middle school to have gender-segregated teams for cross-country running at all,” the lawyer wrote.
The redacted demand letter can be viewed here.
Note the twist here: The ACLU has found a girl who, according to the demand letter, "...is non-binary and does not identify or present as a girl, despite being assigned female at birth," and this girl wants to run on the boy's team — against the hideously unfair norm in this controversy. And the loophole? The ASAA only governs high school sports. This is a middle school, and not subject to the ASAA's rules. The ACLU, no doubt prepping the ground for a lawsuit, points out that the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is violating its own policies by not allowing the girl to run on the boy's team, as well as violating the Equal Protection clauses of both the Alaska and U.S. Constitutions, as well as Title 9.
Further, the Alaska ACLU claims that "district policy does not allow for sex-segregated cross-country running teams."
That last part seems easy enough to fix; it would seem that the Kenai Peninsula Borough's School District could change its own policy. The Kenai is strongly Republican, with President Trump capturing between 55 percent and 70 percent of the vote in Kenai Peninsula districts in 2020 and Republican Senate incumbent Dan Sullivan capturing a similar percentage. (Note that the 2020 election took place before the imposition of ranked-choice voting.) One would think that would defang much of the ACLU's complaint. Or they could simply eliminate any sex-based teams and make all of their sports open enrollment. But these are delaying actions at best.
The Kenai Peninsula School District should, at least in my opinion, do neither of these things. This is an issue that is centered on fairness; the Alaska ACLU is trying to pull a fast one, cynically using a girl who claims to be "non-binary" in an effort to sidestep the unfairness of "transgender girls" — that is to say, boys — competing on girls' sports teams. This is where Alaskans, especially Alaskans with kids in our schools, should dig in their heels. It's clear that the ACLU intends to go to the mat on this issue. They see some give here, as there have been issues in athletics at higher levels that have been decided in favor of the transgender agenda; that may have emboldened the Alaska ACLU. But there have been victories on the side of reason and fairness as well.
Earlier this week, Alaska won a battle in the campaign for fairness in school sports. But, as we see, the campaign goes on, in the Great Land as well as the rest of the United States. It's time to engage; the time for delaying actions is past. It's time for a state-wide statute, to codify the issue. There is no discrimination involved in having sports teams and activities for boys and girls, with boys playing on boys' teams and girls on girls' teams, as long as both are comparably funded and equipped. That is the next step Alaska should take.
