The Trump administration filed a legal brief Thursday before a federal appeals court arguing in favor of an Idaho law barring transgender students from participating in school sports because states aren’t required “to accommodate the team preferences of transgender athletes.” The 40-page brief, filed before the U.S.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and signed by Matthew Donnelly, an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, maintains the trial court erroneously overturned the state law, called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Donnelly argues, allows separate athletic teams based on gender assigned at birth and the sexes are dissimilarly situated in