In rather disheartening news, a discrimination lawsuit brought against the Miss United States of America pageant for banning trans women from competing has been thrown out.
Anita Noelle Green, a trans pageant queen and the 2019 winner of Miss Earth Elite Oregon, filed the lawsuit against the Miss United States of America pageant (not to be confused with the Miss USA pageant) after she was barred from competing in 2019, according to the Oregonian. Green was originally asked to apply to compete in the pageant by Miss United States of America producers, only to have to her application rescinded on the grounds that the competition was for “natural born women” only, Them reported.
Green filed a lawsuit against the pageant in December 2019. “To me, that rule was saying that transgender women aren’t women, and that sends a very harmful message,” Green said in a 2020 interview with Portland NBC affiliate KGW.
Unfortunately, an Oregon judge threw out Green’s lawsuit last week, ruling that the pageant’s right to discriminate was protected under the First Amendment. According to Courthouse News, Judge Michael W. Mosman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon ruled that as an “‘expressive’ organization, rather than a commercial one,” the pageant could not be required to change its discriminatory stance against trans contestants.
Moreover, according to Them, court documents filed by the pageant’s attorneys repeatedly misgendered Green, referring to the plaintiff as “a man who identifies as a woman” and a “biological male who identifies as female.” Seemingly taking a page out of Victoria’s Secret’s handbook for running a brand into the ground, the Miss United States of America pageant also argued that allowing trans women to compete would “undermine its vision” by tarnishing its “message of biological female empowerment.”
Despite the atrocious ruling, however, Green remains hopeful that the case brought much needed recognition to trans discrimination taking place in the pageant world and beyond.
“This case brought awareness to an issue many people were and still are unaware of,” Green told the Oregonian, “and that issue is that discrimination against transgender people is still actively happening in the private and public sector, even within the pageant circuit.”
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