Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Minnesota To Mandate Trans Discrimination

The far-right organization has launched a concerning lawsuit that could lead to horrific precedent against transgender people.

Minnesota Federal Courthouse - Tony Webster - Wikimedia Commons

In recent months, Minnesota has emerged as a national leader in pushing back against the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on transgender rights. Attorney General Keith Ellison has gone on the offensive, preemptively suing over federal threats to strip funding from schools that allow trans students to participate in sports or use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity. Now, the far-right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom—a central force in the Christian nationalist movement—has chosen Minnesota as the testing ground for a once-fringe legal theory: that Title IX not only permits but requires schools to discriminate against transgender students. While the lawsuit is currently confined to Minnesota, its implications could ripple across the country if the courts take the bait.

The lawsuit, filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of the anti-trans advocacy group Female Athletes United, argues that Title IX requires schools to discriminate against transgender students. In a press release, ADF pointed to an incident in which a cisgender girl was hit by a pitch thrown by a transgender girl during a softball game—a routine and common occurrence in the sport—as justification for stripping transgender students of their rights nationwide. The group’s legal theory hinges on turning a standard play into a constitutional crisis, revealing just how far ADF is willing to stretch the law to advance its broader agenda.

“The third FAU member is a sophomore who was hit by a pitch thrown by this [transgender female| athlete during club softball. The speed and strength of the pitch made the pain more intense than she has felt at other times getting hit by a pitch thrown by a |cisgender| girl. She also anticipates she’ll have to compete against this |transgender female| athlete at the state softball tournament this year,” says the ADF in the press release.

The lawsuit leans heavily on President Trump’s executive orders declaring that transgender people do not exist, and interpreting Title IX to mandate discrimination. For instance, it says at one point that “the Trump administration issued a relevant executive order earlier this year, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” and uses that order to claim that it is now the law of the land that sex refers to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” This is not found in any law cited by Trump or the Alliance Defending Freedom, however.

The lawsuit openly advances the argument that Title IX not only allows but requires discrimination against transgender students. It seeks a judicial declaration that allowing transgender girls to participate in sports “fails to provide equal treatment, benefits, and opportunities for girls” under Title IX. If granted, such a ruling would effectively declare that transgender women and girls are not legally recognized as women or girls for the purposes of federal education law—opening the door to their forced exclusion from bathrooms, sports teams, and other sex-separated spaces. While the immediate impact would be limited to Minnesota, an appeal could escalate the case to higher courts—and if the Supreme Court takes it up, this fringe legal theory could become the basis for mandating anti-trans discrimination in schools nationwide, from bathroom bans to sports bans and more.

Notably, transgender participation in sports or bathrooms does not violate any federal law. Title IX has been interpreted to protect transgender people, as evidenced by rulings from federal judges in the 9th Circuit area of jurisdiction, which covers states like California and Idaho. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals itself has ruled that transgender athletes can continue to participate in response to ongoing court cases. Title IX protections for trans athletes have likewise been affirmed in other circuits, such as the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a similar ruling in West Virginia. More recently, Trump backed down from an attempt to pull funding from the state of Maine over transgender athletes.

The list of competitions and events where transgender women have been banned in sports around the world is continuing to grow, ranging from pool to disc golf. In Italy, transgender women were banned from competing in beauty pageants. In the United Kingdom, Rosie Kay, a British Choreographer, told trans and non-binary dancers that they must “confirm their genitalia.” In late November, Angling Trust, the main organization for fishing competitions in England, banned transgender women from competing on women’s teams. Such bans often are far removed from reality or science, which shows that transgender women on estrogen for at least 2 years are well within female ranges for athletic competition, and in these sports, it is difficult to argue that such advantages exist in the first place.

The Alliance Defending Freedom isn’t just asking the court to block a policy—it’s seeking a sweeping mandate to erase trans students from public life. One request is a declaration that transgender inclusion violates Title IX, a ruling that would reverberate far beyond Minnesota. Another demands that the state ban trans athletes outright, without offering any guidance on enforcement—raising the specter of invasive genital exams or forced outing of students. ADF is also pushing to retroactively strip trans athletes of titles and records, and penalize entire teams for including them. If successful, this case wouldn’t just mark a chilling expansion of anti-trans legal strategy—it would be the first time such a ban is imposed by court order in a blue state, signaling that even the most protective jurisdictions aren’t immune from the machinery of far-right legal warfare.