The ban on high school trans female athletes from competing on girls’ teams that Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been pushing ever since such a ban fell flat in the Alaska Legislature went into effect this week.
The Alaska School Activities Association, the non-profit organization that oversees high school sports and other activities, adopted a change to its bylaws on a 5-3 vote on Monday. This action, its director said, was effectively forced by the regulations approved by the Board of Education earlier this year.
“It’s a direct response to the changes in the DEED regulations,” Bill Strickland said before the hearing. “Regardless of how you feel about the rule itself, ASAA is pretty much compelled to make this change. … I think it’s important people know that we believe we’re compelled to do this. Failure to do it would, by department regs, not let (school districts) join ASAA.”
The Alaska Legislature has solidly rejected several attempts to pass such a ban—which have become popular among conservative states, largely incited by the same handful of anecdotes and transphobia—but the governor and his allies have sought to enact it through other means while pushing other measures seen as damaging to LGBTQ youth. That came in the form of new regulations by the Dunleavy-appointed Board of Education, which passed a regulation requiring districts to have a cisgender girls-only division.
The bylaws passed by ASAA mirror the state regulations, creating a division for only girls assigned female at birth. It effectively does away with a boys’ division, creating an open division that boys, transgender boys, transgender girls and cisgender girls can all play on. One of the key arguments cited by the Board of Education’s members when passing the regulation was the concern that cisgender girls could be grievously injured by playing with anyone other than another cisgender girl.
Enforcement of the measure is still unclear and left largely to school districts to determine. Strickland conceded that people could challenge a female athlete for possibly being transgender and said the process would play out similarly to how an aged-base challenge would play out. He said it would largely come down to the athlete’s birth certificate.
The enforcement of the regulation has raised serious concerns about violating students’ privacy, and because the regulation singles out trans girls, it is also expected to raise issues of discrimination and equal protection.
Strickland said ultimately, it’s likely that rule will be challenged in court, as almost every other ban or limitation on trans athletes has. But before that plays out, a significant question is what school districts in municipalities with anti-discrimination ordinances may do. In a newsletter before the meeting, Anchorage Sen. Löki Tobin warned that the measure would likely conflict with the city’s anti-discrimination measure and could put the participation of Alaska’s largest school district in state competition into question.
“In Anchorage, we don’t permit discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Anchorage’s code specifically prohibits discrimination in educational institutions,” she said. “The Anchorage School District and other school districts in communities with non-discrimination ordinances will be openly violating their local ordinances if the proposed bylaw change is approved and they continue to participate in ASAA.”
In a statement, ASD spokesperson MJ Thim said they’re still reviewing the bylaw’s implications.
“We are disappointed in ASAA’s decision today. Our hope was this matter would have been tabled,” Thim said. “We will be reviewing the decision and the impacts it will have on our students.”
The three members who voted against adopting the measure as Anchorage School District representative Tim Helvey, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District representative Wayne Sawchuk and Alaska Association of School Boards President Dana Mock.
While Fairbanks doesn’t have an anti-discrimination measure like Anchorage’s, its school board did pass a resolution recognizing October as LGBTQ History Month after fierce conservative pushback. In the city’s most recent local elections, the two members who voted against the resolutions were soundly voted out and replaced with more progressive board members.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.