Page:Adams ex rel. Kasper v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida (2022).pdf/58

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USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 58 of 150

8
Lagoa, J., Specially Concurring
18-13592

Funding as Men, World Econ. F. (Aug. 25, 2016), https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/sustaining-the-olympic-legacy-women-in-sports-and-public-policy/. “[R]esearch shows stunningly that 94[] percent of women C-Suite executives today played sport, and over half played at a university level.” Id.; Coleman et al., supra, at 106. Being engaged in sports “inculcate[s] the values of fitness and athleticism for lifelong health and wellness” and “impart[s] additional socially valuable traits including teamwork, sportsmanship, and leadership, as well as individually valuable traits including goal setting, time management, perseverance, discipline, and grit.” Coleman et al., supra, at 104. To open up competition to transgender women and girls hinders biological women and girls—over half of the United States population—from experiencing these invaluable benefits and learning these traits. Indeed:

[T]he sports exception to Title IX’s general nondiscrimination rule has long been one of the statute’s most popular features. This affirmative approach is understood to be necessary to ensure that the sex-linked differences that emerge from the onset of male puberty do not stand as obstacles to sex equality in the athletic arena. From the beginning, it was understood that any different, sex neutral measures would ensure precisely the opposite—that spaces on selective teams and spots in finals and podiums would all go to boys and men. The sports exception makes it possible for women and girls also to benefit from the multiple positive effects of these experiences, and for