U.S. Appeals Court Rules Miss United States of America Can Exclude Transgenders from Participating

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that the Miss United States of America pageant can exclude transgenders from participating.

The ruling came about after Anita Green, who was born a man, attempted to enter the Oregon pageant in 2018 but was unqualified based on the rules of entry.

Green told the program director, Tanice Smith, “I’ll talk to my attorney about this then because discrimination is unacceptable.”

A trial court found in favor of the pageant and so Green appealed to the Circuit Court. It is unclear if Green will attempt to take the issue to the Supreme Court or seek an “en banc” rehearing of the case by the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling was 2-1 in favor of the pageant and Trump-appointed Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who wrote the opinion, was joined by Bush appointee Judge Carlos Bea in favor.

A Bill Clinton-appointed judge, Susan Graber, dissented from the panel’s ruling and criticized the court for not first deciding whether the Oregon anti-discrimination law under which Green sued the pageant is relevant to the case.

The judges instead jumped to a constitutional claim in the opinion which said, “Our First Amendment jurisprudence has long understood ‘speech’ to extend ‘beyond written or spoken words as mediums of expression…’ reaching so far as to include ‘various forms of entertainment and visual expression as purely expressive activities.”

“Beauty pageants fall comfortably within this ambit. As with theater, cinema, or the Super Bowl halftime show, beauty pageants combine speech with live performances such as music and dancing to express a message,” the judges wrote.

Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Christiana Kiefer, who represented Miss United States of America in court, said in a statement, “Ignoring the biological reality that men and women are different harms women and their opportunities to compete, excel, and win—from female athletes sidelined in their own sports to women competing in beauty pageants on the national stage.”