The operator of the beauty pageant Miss United States of America cannot be forced to include transgender women in their competition, a federal court ruled Wednesday.
The lawsuit was rejected on the basis that it would infringe on the pageant’s freedom to express “the ideal vision of American womanhood,” San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The lawsuit was filed in Oregon by Anita Green, a transgender woman who was barred from participating in the beauty pageant by the operator. Green said the beauty pageant’s decision was “an intentional act of discrimination” and criticized the operator for being “on the wrong side of history.”
“Miss United States of America expresses its message in part through whom it chooses as its contestants, and the First Amendment affords it the right to do so… Given a pageant’s competitive and performative structure, it is clear that who competes and succeeds in a pageant is how the pageant speaks,” Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote in his opinion.
Green is a transgender activist and sought to challenge the beauty pageant’s policy of allowing only “natural born” women to compete on the grounds that it violated of Oregon state anti-discrimination law. Last year, Green said in a statement, “Transgender women are women. My message has always been consistent and my message is this: every person has beauty.”
Two of the three judges on the panel supported the pageant’s right to bar Green on First Amendment grounds. The judges, Lawrence VanDyke and Carlos Bea, were both appointed by Republican administrations. The former under President Trump and the latter during President George W. Bush.
The lone dissenting judge, Susan Graber, was appointed to the 9th Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1998. Graber called the majority decision “a radical departure from the well-settled principle,” in her closing opinion.