USA Powerlifting wages legal battle to keep male-born athletes out of women’s division

Few sports organizations are willing to tackle the upsurge of transgender athletes in female sports, but Larry Maile doesn’t mind doing the heavy lifting.

The president of USA Powerlifting, Maile has become a hero within the single-sex sports movement for his four-year battle against male-born athletes in the women’s division, a fight that he’s willing to take to the Supreme Court.

“We know we’re a national landmark,” Maile said at a press briefing earlier this month with female athletes ahead of a competition in Dallas, Texas.

He called USA Powerlifting “the first NGB [national governing body] to actually address this issue. We were the first to actually say that it matters. And it still matters.”

USA Powerlifting filed an appeal earlier this month after a Minnesota judge ruled in February that the organization violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act by barring male-to-female transgender lifter JayCee Cooper from competing in women’s events.

Ramsey County District Court Judge Patrick Diamond also prohibited the organization from operating in Minnesota until it submits a revised policy on transgender participation. USA Powerlifting sought a stay of the order pending appeal, which was denied last month by the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

The upshot is that USA Powerlifting has suspended operations in Minnesota, including competitions and membership sales for both men and women, while the case plays out.

In Mr. Maile’s corner is Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, who blasted what she called the “radical erasure of an entire sport.”

“All of Minnesota’s girls are being targeted and mandated to accept sex discrimination in order to accommodate the preferences of one single male athlete, and USA Powerlifting is not willing to accept that without a fight,” said Smith.

Representing Minneapolis resident JayCee Cooper is Gender Justice, which called the court’s decision “a historic win for transgender rights in sports.”

Now in her mid-30s, Cooper began powerlifting in 2018, four years after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria and taking hormones. After Cooper sought to enter a women’s bench press event in 2019, USA Powerlifting issued a statement barring male-born athletes from the women’s division.

Cooper, who had applied for an exemption on her hormone use, said she was “gutted” by the decision.

“I feel like I should be able to compete because I’m a woman, and offering a women’s category means categorically that I should be included,” Cooper told Daily Blast Live in a 2021 interview.

The case prompted USA Powerlifting to study the differences in men’s and women’s performances dating back to 1981, when the newly formed group held its first event, and what the organization found only confirmed its position.

“We studied 17,000 powerlifters worldwide, and what we found is that men outperform women in powerlifting, depending on how you analyze the data, between 43-65%,” Maile said. “That’s how much stronger men are than women.”

The group also looked at the differences between girls and boys before age 10 and during adolescence. The study found no significant difference between the sexes at ages 8-9, when children are first eligible to compete in powerlifting.

“But at 10-11 years old, the differences start to emerge, and that’s coincident with the onset of puberty,” Maile said. “At 12-13, the difference is profound – it’s almost 30%. And as powerlifters age into adulthood, you see the differences that we found.”

Maile, a clinical psychologist who holds a Ph.D. in psychology, said the group then studied whether the differences could be mitigated. With hormone therapy, the performance gap was reduced by about 10-12%.

“That still leaves us with a 30-50% difference in terms of performance. And that can’t be overcome,” he said. “So our decision in terms of our policy was, you can’t include transwomen in the women’s division because that is fundamentally unfair to women.”

Even so, he insisted USA Powerlifting is a “friendly and welcoming organization,” offering in recent years “multiple ways to allow for inclusion.”

Sports organizations are often asked why they don’t just add a division for transgender athletes. USA Powerlifting did that by launching the MX Category in January 2021 for “all gender identities,” which drew a handful of participants.
 
Maile said he also “put on the table” the idea of following the International Powerlifting Federation’s rule on testosterone, which requires male-born lifters to keep their testosterone in serum below 2.4 nmol/Liter for at least 12 months prior to the first competition.
 
In addition, “we have offered a handicapping system: If transwomen are potentially 40% stronger, say, and you handicap them by that 40%, the playing field is level,” Maile said. “I will tell you that that was universally rejected.”
 
As a result, he said, “We conclude that this argument is really not about inclusion.”
 
“This argument is about dominance,” Maile said. “If you know that you can go to a competition and be 40% better than your competition, it’s about winning – it’s not about fairness. And that’s where we are today.”
 
Judge Diamond rejected the option of diverting transgender athletes to a third category, calling it “the very essence of separation and segregation and it is what the MHRA prohibits.”
 
As Cooper put it, “trans women are women. We are not men. That is the very minimum portion that you have to get to in order to understand my point of view.”
 
Maile said the case has been particularly difficult for female lifters who have openly sided with USA Powerlifting, saying they have been targeted for criticism and more.
 
“They receive threats and are characterized as bigoted,” he said. “They have to do with threats to vocation, they have to do with threats of association, they involve media attacks, and some of us have received physical and other threats directly.”
 
Even so, a half-dozen current and former female athletes turned up to support him at the press conference organized by ICONS. Among them was NCAA swimming champion Riley Gaines, who spoke via remote feed.
 
Canadian powerlifter April Hutchinson, who has been called “Canada’s strongest woman,” said she has been threatened with disciplinary action for speaking out against policies that have allowed a male-born lifter to compete on the women’s side.
 
“We women have to stand up and let our voices be known,” said Jade Dickens, a member of USA Powerlifting for 20 years. “We have been pushed to the back and we have been silenced because men want another place to dominate, and they have come to female sports to do that. Is that fair? No, it is not.”