SALT LAKE CITY ā Plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Utah’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ high school sports argue the governing body of high school athletics violated a preliminary court order pausing the ban and asked to hold the organization in contempt of court.
The ongoing case stems from a 2022 law passed by the state Legislature, which bars transgender girls from participating in high school sports. Three anonymous plaintiffs challenged the law, and a judge temporarily blocked part of it from taking effect in August 2022 ā allowing transgender athletes to participate in certain cases while the lawsuit moves forward.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 5 stating that “it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” after which the Utah High School Activities Association, or UHSAA ā which is one of the defendants in the case ā adopted a new policy blocking transgender athletes from participation.
In court filings, attorneys for UHSAA said it adopted the policy to comply with the executive order to keep federal funding, not to enforce the state Legislature’s ban, but the plaintiffs claimed the new policy violated the preliminary injunction blocking HB11 and asked that the UHSAA be held in contempt of court.
Both sides argued the case in a lengthy hearing Wednesday before Utah 3rd District Judge Keith Kelly, who asked for further explanation before making a decision. Here’s what both sides argued and what happens next.
Athletes say state violated order blocking ban
The plaintiffs in the case are two high schoolers, identified only as Jane Noe and Jill Poe. A third plaintiff, known as Jenny Roe, was dismissed from the case in 2022 after being deemed ineligible for her school’s volleyball team during her senior year.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued in court filings that the new policy on transgender athletes runs afoul of the preliminary injunction against Utah’s HB11. Amy Whelan, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs on Wednesday, said the UHSAA engaged in “very egregious actions” in adopting the new policy and asked for sanctions against the organization, possibly including criminal contempt of court charges.
She said the association essentially used Trump’s executive action as an excuse to continue enforcing Utah’s ban on transgender athletes and argued the president’s interpretation of Title IX is inconsistent with Congress’s intent and how other courts have ruled on the issue.
“UHSAA used the executive order as a pretext to do exactly what the preliminary injunction forbids,” Whelan said. “They cannot simply avoid this court’s ruling protecting plaintiffs’ and other transgender girls’ constitutional rights by trying to repackage the ban as something else.”
State seeks to dismiss case following executive order
Keith Barlow, an assistant Utah attorney general, said UHSAA and a pair of school districts party to the case were put in an “impossible situation” with the preliminary injunction on one hand and Trump’s executive order on the other. The association was “caught in the middle when HB11 was passed” and “caught in the middle when the executive order came down,” he said, and was forced to “balance between losing federal funds or accommodating one student.”
In court filings, he asserted that Granite School District is projected to receive over $90 million in federal funds during the 2025 fiscal year, which accounts for just shy of 10% of the district’s revenue.
He pushed back on claims that UHSAA violated the court order, saying the new transgender policy simply complies with Trump’s interpretation of federal law and is not related to the state’s prohibition on participation.
The state also asked the court to dismiss the case altogether, claiming that the executive order blocks the participation of plaintiffs in sports regardless of the restrictions in Utah law.
“UHSAA will follow the terms of the president’s executive order precluding plaintiffs from competing and alleviating their alleged harms,” defendants argued in a motion to dismiss the case in February, calling the plaintiffs’ claims “no longer redressable.”
What’s next?
Kelly called the question of contempt of court proceedings “a very significant issue that the plaintiffs have raised” and asked for supplemental briefings as to which side bears the burden of proof.
Plaintiffs argued the UHSAA changed the “status quo” by adopting the new transgender athlete policy, meaning it should prove it did not violate the court order. Utah’s rules of civil procedure state: “The moving party bears the burden of proof on all claims made in the motion.” The UHSAA said that means the plaintiffs must prove whether its actions ran afoul of the court.
Citations from the plaintiffs included cases in which other courts have disagreed with Trump’s interpretation of Title IX. A federal court earlier this month temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from freezing federal funds to Maine after it accused the state of violating Trump’s executive order on transgender athletes.
The final outcome of that case could impact Utah’s legal fight because if a court found Trump’s order to be illegal, in theory, the UHSAA would no longer have any basis for blocking transgender athletes pending the outcome of the lawsuit over HB11.
“I’m not suggesting that I’m making a decision or giving an opinion on the validity of the executive order, but hypothetically, if the Supreme Court tomorrow ruled that it was invalid, then there wouldn’t be a basis for stopping this case under the plaintiffs’ argument,” Kelly said.
Assuming he believed the order did have legal impact on the lawsuit, Kelly asked both sides to further argue whether the case should be dismissed or simply put on hold pending other outcomes in what both sides described as an unprecedentedly “evolving” legal environment under Trump.
Attorneys for both sides will have time to respond to those questions, and a follow-up hearing was scheduled for June 2.
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