CHSAA Deal Lets Colorado Districts Keep Girls’ Sports Female-Only As Lawsuit Proceeds
CHSAA settlement lets schools keep sex-based teams and locker rooms while lawsuit against Colorado officials continues.
A group of Colorado school districts led by El Paso County’s District 49 has secured a major win in the fight over keeping biological males out of girls' high school sports.
Under a new settlement with the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA), the districts can keep sports teams, locker rooms and overnight travel arrangements separated by biological sex. In return, the schools will drop their claims against CHSAA and pay the association for legal and operational costs tied to the case.
The agreement is the first major development in a broader federal lawsuit that targets Colorado’s civil rights laws and CHSAA’s bylaws on transgender athlete participation. District 49 and its partners argue that state rules which allow athletes to compete based on gender identity instead of biological sex violate Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause by stripping protections from female athletes.
The lawsuit against the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Attorney General Phil Weiser is still moving forward.
CHSAA Settlement Details
The settlement spells out clear protections for districts that want to keep girls’ sports for girls.
District 49 and the other plaintiff schools are allowed to classify sports teams based on biological sex. They are also free to keep locker rooms and overnight travel accommodations separated by biological sex without the CHSAA treating those policies as violations of its rules.
A CHSAA settlement lets Colorado school districts separate teams, locker rooms, and travel by biological sex while a broader federal lawsuit over transgender athlete rules continues.
(Stock Photo - Getty Images)
The agreement also shields public statements about male competitive and safety advantages in girls’ sports from being labeled "unsportsmanlike conduct" as long as those comments stick to the policy debate and do not advocate violence or personally demean individuals.
CHSAA’s current bylaws do not directly address bathrooms or locker rooms. Those issues are left to local school boards, which is exactly where District 49 says they belong.
In May, District 49’s board adopted a policy that recognizes two sexes in school sports and bars athletes from playing on teams or sharing locker rooms and hotel rooms with students of the opposite biological sex. The next day, the district filed a federal lawsuit challenging both Colorado’s civil rights law and CHSAA’s rules on transgender participation.
The district says it was stuck between two different sets of directives. On one side is Colorado law and CHSAA policy that push schools to allow athletes to compete based on gender identity. On the other side are a federal law and a Trump administration executive order that tells schools to preserve single-sex sports and protect girls’ opportunities.
Potential Wide-Ranging Affects of Settlement
This is similar to the situation in Michigan that OutKick has exclusively reported throughout the fall season. The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) fed OutKick the same line about being caught between state law and the federal executive order. Ann Arbor Skyline had a trans-identifying biological male on its girls' volleyball team and Skyline reached the state Division 1 quarterfinals.
Unlike Colorado, no lawsuits have yet arisen in Michigan challenging the MHSAA and its policy on transgender athletes. The MHSAA currently allows biological males to compete in girls' sports so long as the school obtains a transgender participation waiver.
It'll be interesting to see if the Colorado decision causes any movement in Michigan.