In a recent appellate court ruling, the rights of transgender women to participate in Miss United States of America LLC beauty pageants were challenged in what some activists have called a setback for the trans community.
The U.S court of appeals for the ninth circuit has upheld a lower court’s ruling that operators of the Miss United States of America pageant cannot be compelled to allow openly transgender women to participate in the competition. According to the court, the organization's ability to express its belief that the competition should cater to only “natural born” females would be obstructed otherwise.
The ruling was the result of a 2019 lawsuit brought forward by transgender woman and activist, Anita Green. Green sued pageant organizers after she was denied the ability to compete in the annual Miss Oregon beauty pageant.
According to Green, the organization’s rules regarding Miss United States of America were a violation of anti-discrimination laws in Oregon. Green’s argument took specific aim at the organization's competition rule that only allowed “natural born” females to compete.
Miss United States of America LLC is similarly-named but not to be confused with Miss USA pageants. Under the guidelines of Miss USA pageants, transgender women are allowed to participate in the competitions.
Green’s lawsuit argued that “this policy, intentionally designed to exclude the specific class to which plaintiff belongs – transgender females – is discriminatory because it denied plaintiff the full and equal advantages and privileges of defendant’s services in violation of Oregon’s public accommodations law.'”
Despite Green arguing that the pageantry guidelines for who could participate were arbitrary, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman dismissed Green's claims.
“This case brought awareness to an issue many people were and still are unaware of and that issue is that discrimination against transgender people is still actively happening in the private and public sector even within the pageant circuit,” Green shared in a statement following the initial ruling.
In the most recent ruling, the appellate court shared, "The panel noted that it is commonly understood that beauty pageants are generally designed to express the 'ideal vision of American womanhood.’ The Pageant would not be able to communicate 'the celebration of biological women' if it were forced to allow Green to participate."
The ruling went on to express that forcing the pageant to allow transgender women to compete “would fundamentally alter the Pageant's expressive message in direct violation of the First Amendment."
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