A girl who is on a high school wrestling team in Washington state asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to wade deeper into the transgender rights battle by allowing her to opt out of matches where she would have to face a transgender athlete.
Kallie Keeler’s case had previously made headlines when she accused a transgender opponent of sexually assaulting her during a match.
Now she and her mother, Stephanie Lynne Brown, have asked the Supreme Court to intervene to protect her, saying federal law not only allows but encourages sex-separate school sports leagues in order to bolster girls’ opportunities.
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Instead, the family said, male athletes are winning events and depriving girls of fair and safe competitions.
“These are not hypothetical injuries; they are actual harms that cannot be undone and that female athletes—like KMK — continue to suffer season after season,” the family argued in its petition to the justices, using initials for Kallie, who is a juvenile.
The case comes to the justices just months after they ruled that states are allowed to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports. That upheld laws in about half of the states.
But the ruling did not require that states adopt those sorts of laws, leaving the other half of the country to continue to allow transgender athletes to participate in leagues as they see fit.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the chief defendant in the case in lower courts and the body that maintains the rules allowing transgender athletes’ participation, stood by its policy this week.
“The WIAA remains committed to following Washington state law which permits student-athletes to participate in sports consistent with the gender with which they identify,” the organization said in a statement. “If state law changes in the future, the WIAA holds the authority to revise policies as necessary to remain in compliance with state law. The WIAA will not comment further on a matter in litigation.”
Kallie’s family asked the high court to either take the case immediately or issue an injunction blocking Washington from enforcing its rules while the case winds its way through the courts.
The family said Washington allows student-athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity. There is no requirement that males take medical treatments to suppress characteristics that generally make them better athletes.
Kallie’s family said they want her to be able to opt out of facing male opponents without having to forfeit the match.
In their petition, they described the encounter they said amounted to a sexual assault.
They said they did not know that the opponent was a male, but Kallie did observe that the opponent appeared to be stronger.
In the second period, they said the opponent reached between Kallie’s legs and pushed fingers through her singlet, spandex shorts and underwear, and sexually assaulted her.
“No legal move in wrestling puts a hand into a girl’s vagina. The male’s act of digital vaginal penetration was a flagrant foul and criminal conduct. So KMK stopped trying to win,” the family argued.
She let herself be pinned to end the match, and the victory allowed the opponent to claim third place and build points toward qualifying for league and state tournaments.
Only after the loss did a coach from another team tell the family the opponent was male.
The family said a league investigation months later affirmed that the opponent “likely touched” KMK’s vagina and “caused her discomfort.”
They said the principal of Rogers High School, where the opponent attended, shrugged off the incident by saying, “That’s wrestling.”
The principal and the athletic coordinator at the school were charged over the summer with failing to immediately report a potential sexual assault. State law requires educators to report incidents.
The News Tribune in Tacoma reported that prosecutors declined to charge the transgender athlete. They cited difficulty in assigning responsibility amid the complicated rules governing consent and athletics.
The federal Education Department announced a civil rights investigation into the incident earlier this year.
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