Lauren Moye, FISM News

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Biological male students in Utah will have the opportunity to participate in girls’ sports this school year after a judge restrained a total ban on transgender athletes competing against the opposite sex on Friday.

Judge Keith Kelly of Utah’s Third District Court placed a temporary injunction against House Bill 11 on Friday after the parents of three children challenged the law’s total ban on transgender athletes competing against the opposite sex.

The lawsuit involves three children under the pseudonyms Jenny Roe, Jane Noe, and Jill Poe. All three children are biological males who identify as females.

Their parents filed the lawsuit against the Utah High School Activities Association and two separate school systems, Granite School District and Jordan School District, on the grounds that the law was a risk to the mental and physical wellbeing of their children.

Kelly stated in his ruling that he found that the law was “singling them out for unfavorable treatment as transgender girls” since the law allowed for biological females to compete freely.

“This is plainly unfavorable treatment,” the decision said.

However, Kelly’s decision does not automatically give a free pass for male children with gender dysphoria to compete on their schools’ female teams. Instead, it triggered the formation of a School Activity Eligibility Commission to come into effect that will examine each case on an individual basis.

The biological males will be able “to compete only upon the commission’s determination that their being able to compete is fair under all of the circumstances,” the judge ruled.

The state’s governor, senate president, and house speaker will elect seven members to this commission. The seven members must fit specific criteria as a mental health professional, a statistician, a physician with gender dysphoria expertise, an athletic association representative, a collegiate-level athletic trainer, a high school athletic coach, and a sports physiologist.

The physical characteristics of the student in question will be taken into consideration by the commission.

“The commission makes it possible to preserve women’s sports while making evidence-based decisions on a case-by-case basis,” said state Senator Curt Bramble, who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

Utah’s H.B. 11 has followed an unusual path for a bill so far. The judge’s ruling places the bill’s operation closer to its original draft as a partial ban that would evaluate biological males case-by-case to ensure fairness to biological female athletes.

The bill only gained widespread legislative support after it was edited to be a full ban on biological males competing in girls’ sports.

However, Republican Governor Spencer Cox vetoed H.B. 11 when it landed on his desk. At the time, he argued that the bill had a small impact since there was only one registered transgender athlete on a female team in the state at that time. He also feared schools would bear the brunt of lawsuit costs.

The legislature then voted to overrule this veto with an additional amendment on the bill that would prevent schools from bearing the cost of legal challenges.