An attorney for a college athlete star who wrote of her misgivings about competing against transgender athletes has claimed editors made changes because of a woke backlash, accusing them of censorship.
Chelsea Mitchell was an outstanding female college athlete who said she had missed out on a string of honors after transgender girls were allowed to compete in women's sports following a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) ruling.
Later becoming one of three female athletes to file a lawsuit attempting to overturn the policy at the start of last year, Mitchell’s column, written for USA Today, is said to have been switched without her knowledge to use the term 'male' instead of transgender, with an editor’s note expressing “regret that hurtful language was used."
Alliance Defending Freedom, the non-profit legal group that represents Mitchell, has posted the original opinion piece in full, and her attorney, Christiana Holcomb, has condemned the changes as being driven by "backlash from the woke mob."
"USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob,” she seethed on social media. "This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate.
"Title IX [legislation] is really clear that the reason we have women's sports as a separate category is to protect equal athletic opportunities for female athletes like Chelsea.
“We want to see the policy fixed so that no other young women in the state of Connecticut have to experience that unfairness.”
The raging issue continues to be hugely contentious in the US, where attempts to ban transgender athletes from competing in female sports have been the subject of hotly-contested votes, counter-claims to overturn them and emotive political arguments on both sides.
Mitchell has been running at collegiate level since graduating. "I've lost four women's state championship titles, two all-New England awards and countless other opportunities and spots on the podium to biologically male runners," she told Fox News.
"It is a big issue. Personally, I lost a lot, but there were countless other girls who also lost state championships. I believe there were 15 state championships that the two biological males took from biological females.
“And there were more than 85 girls who missed out on opportunities to advance to medals and make finals. And so it's not just me: girls across the state were being impacted by this policy."
A federal court dismissed the case to prevent transgender athletes from competing last month, but Holcomb says the fight will continue, with fairness “just not what's happening in the state of Connecticut right now” and “biological males having dominated the girls category."
"The district court still refused to engage with the merits of the argument and recognize that the girls have had significant losses," she said, discussing a notice of appeal that was launched this week.
"The court utterly dismissed their lost opportunities and achievements and so we want to see that remedied."
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