Founded to give a voice to women fighting to keep males out of women’s sports, an apparel company led by a champion gymnast is seeking to stop Colorado’s new anti-discrimination law that it claims forces acceptance of trans ideology.
XX-XY Athletics, which explicitly opposes men being allowed to compete in women’s sports, filed a complaint on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
At issue is a recent amendment to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to make protections based on gender identity to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed,” and applying this to “public accommodations[] and advertising.”
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“This expresses the legislature’s intent that it be illegal for public accommodations like XX-XY Athletics, in their advertising, customer interactions, and elsewhere, to refer to transgender-identifying individuals with their given names or with biologically accurate language,” reads the lawsuit.
“If XX-XY Athletics refuses, the company faces cease-and-desist orders, expensive investigations, hearings, and civil and criminal penalties. Colorado officials have not hesitated to go after businesses for violating the same law in the past, torching the First Amendment in the process.”
National gymnastics champion Jennifer Sey launched the company in March of last year with the “mission of giving a voice to those advocating to protect women’s sports.” She believes “legacy athletic brands” will not “stand up for female athletes who are losing competitions to men.”
XX-XY Athletics is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has successfully argued First Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including action taken by the state against baker Jack Phillips.
The Alliance Defending Freedom contends that the law infringes on the company’s free speech rights because it allows anyone who perceives discrimination in XX-XY Athletics advertising to file a complaint in court, which could bring about fines or criminal penalties.
ADF Senior Counsel Hal Frampton, director of the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives, said in a statement released Wednesday that “Colorado continues to place itself on the wrong side of the law by forcing Coloradans to speak against their conscience.”
“XX-XY Athletics believes that women deserve to compete fairly and holds to the commonsense view that biological differences exist between men and women, but Colorado’s law places them at risk for speaking the truth,” stated Frampton.
“We are urging the court to protect the ability of Coloradans to openly express their beliefs on this hotly debated issue.”
This month, Colorado passed House Bill 25-1312, also known as “Concerning Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals” or the Kelly Loving Act.
Among its provisions, the new law amends CADA to allow for anti-discrimination protections for “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how the individual chooses to be addressed,” having already included protections for “an individual’s way of reflecting and expressing the individual’s gender to the outside world, typically demonstrated through appearance, dress, and behavior.”
“The General Assembly finds and declares that each Coloradan has the right to access fair employment, housing opportunities, public accommodations, and advertising that is free from discrimination regardless of their membership in a protected class,” stated the law.
Democratic state Sen. Faith Winter, one of the sponsors of the bill, defended the measure, saying in a statement earlier this month that it is about combating genuine discrimination.
“This isn’t if someone shows up at your workplace and you call them the wrong name or misgender them. There has to be intentionality to cause harm. And so this is about the action to the individual and not just the speech,” she stated.
In addition to the XX-XY Athletics lawsuit, the new law also faces a legal challenge from a coalition of conservative groups represented by the Virginia-based group Defending Education.
They argue that the bill’s definition of “gender expression” is “overbroad,” claiming in their lawsuit that the legislation is “designed to punish disfavored speech.”
“The law punishes those who refuse to speak using chosen names and pronouns, and it does so in order to suppress traditional beliefs about sex and gender,” the legal filing states. “In other words, the law openly discriminates based on viewpoint.”
