USA Powerlifting will now be forced to allow transgender athletes to compete in the women’s division after losing a multi-year discrimination case brought by a trans lifter.
JayCee Cooper, a transgender woman, first filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019, stating the organization was banning her from participating as a woman.
In 2021, Cooper filed an official lawsuit against USA Powerlifting in a state court, accusing the organization of discrimination.
This week, the organization was told to ‘cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices’ related to sexual orientation and gender identity, according to a court ruling. USA Powerlifting now has two weeks to reverse its former policy.
‘The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than. That is the very essence of separation and segregation, and it is what the MHRA prohibits,’ the ruling states.
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