A metro-area softball player was the main focus of a lawsuit filed this week against a Minnesota policy that allows transgender athletes to play varsity high school sports. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Several metro-area high school softball players are suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state leaders to remove transgender athletes from their sport.
In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, an organization representing the players from two high schools, Female Athletes United, alleges in the suit that a decade-old Minnesota policy allowing transgender athletes to play has created an unsafe environment and unfair competition for the Maple Grove High and Farmington High players. The suit focuses on an unnamed metro-area player who the plaintiffs allege was born male.
In the suit, the softball players state they do not know what “medical interventions, if any,” the player has received. The players said the state created an uneven playing field for female athletes by allowing males to compete in women’s sports “regardless of any pharmaceutical intervention, and testosterone suppression and puberty blockers.”
The Minnesota State High School League’s board of directors in 2015 voted to open girls sports to transgender student-athletes. The decision took effect for the 2015-16 school year and made Minnesota the 33rd state to adopt a formal transgender student policy.
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