A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has dismissed a Broward County teen’s challenge to the constitutionality of a 2021 Florida law that bars transgender female students from playing on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman on Thursday issued a 32-page decision rejecting arguments that the law violated the equal-protection rights of the student, identified by the initials D.N. Altman said the student needed to show the Legislature had a discriminatory purpose in passing the law (SB 1028).
The lawsuit, in part, cited statements made by legislators that it said showed such discrimination. But Altman wrote that the student “hasn’t plausibly alleged” that the Legislature was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. “At best, D.N. has suggested that SB 1028 impacts transgender girls differently than it does other students and that one or two legislators may have been motivated by improper animus when they voted for the law,” Altman wrote. “As we’ve shown, however, we cannot impute the motivations of a couple legislators to the Florida Legislature as a whole.”
Then-President Trump appointed Altman, a member of the ultra-conservative Federalist Society whose alumni hold a majority on the Supreme Court, in 2018. He was one of the yongest-ever appointees to the federal bench.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Equal Protection Clause requires heightened scrutiny for gender-based classifications as well as for race-based classifications,” he said during his confirmation hearing. He declined to answer a more precise question about whether “the Fourteenth Amendment require that states treat transgender people the same as those who are not transgender,” saying the Supreme Court had not yet addressed the issue. The Senate confirmed him in 2019 in a 66-33 vote.
The Supreme Court still hasn’t. But Altman now has. He concluded that the lawsuit’s “allegations — even when viewed in the light most favorable to D.N. — fail to show that, in enacting SB 1028, the Florida Legislature acted with a discriminatory purpose.”
Attorneys for the transgender girl filed suit in June 2021, after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the ban. The law was part of a series of measures passed in Florida and other GOP-led states in recent years that have focused on transgender people. Altman’s ruling said the Broward student is 16 years old and was diagnosed with gender dysphoria at age 7.
It said she has played sports such as volleyball but was barred by the law from playing girls’ sports at school. Altman also dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit in November 2023 but allowed the student’s attorneys to file a revised case.
–FlaglerLive and News Service of Florida
