Law groups challenging Minnesota’s transgender athlete policy have long taken on conservative causes

In late April, Minnesota’s attorney general responded with a lawsuit over threats from the White House to cut federal funding to the state’s schools if it did not comply with two executive orders — one of which attempts to ban transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports.

Almost exactly one month later, the state encountered its latest challenger in the lightning-rod issue: legal groups with an extensive history of fighting for conservative Christian causes in the courtroom.

Alliance Defending Freedom, an influential part of the conservative Christian movement, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three metro-area high school softball players targeting Minnesota’s decade-old policy allowing transgender athletes to participate in sports, arguing that it has created an unsafe and unfair environment. The suit focuses on an unnamed metro-area player who the plaintiffs allege was born male.

“Minnesota is failing its female athletes. The state is putting the rights of males ahead of females, telling girls their hard work may never be enough to win and that they don‘t deserve fairness and safety,” Suzanne Beecher, an attorney for ADF, said in a prior statement announcing the lawsuit. “By sacrificing protection for female athletes, Minnesota fails to offer girls equal treatment and opportunity, violating Title IX’s provisions.”

But long before their lawsuit landed in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota on May 19, ADF has spent more than three decades litigating cases aimed at advancing conservative Christian values, and winning.

Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Alliance Defending Freedom was started in 1994 by Christian leaders who “wanted to create an alliance-building legal organization with the goal of keeping the doors open for the Gospel,” its website states.

The nonprofit has since grown into a sprawling network employing 4,900 attorneys across the United States to advance “every person’s God-given right to live and speak the truth.” From 2022-2023, ADF raked in more than $100 million in revenue, according to tax filings.

The legal group has claimed numerous wins in high-profile cases locally and in the country’s highest court, reporting 15 victories in the U.S. Supreme Court.

In one significant example, ADF attorneys assisted the Mississippi legal team in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision that stripped the federal right to abortion and left the decision up to individual states. Other cases include representing a Colorado baker who refused to provide a cake to a same-sex couple and seeking to roll back the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to approve the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld access to the drug.

In a local case that was seen as a possible sequel to the Supreme Court siding with the Colorado baker, ADF attorneys represented a St. Cloud couple who sued the state in an effort to refuse providing videography for same-sex weddings. In 2019, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor.

Joining ADF in its most recent suit against Minnesota is True North Legal, an independent Minnesota law firm that’s taken on a breadth of religious freedom causes, including religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccines and filing an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case that dissolved the federal protections for abortion.

Both parties predict any outcome in the case is likely to have ripple effects beyond Minnesota’s borders. Its influence would only grow if the case reaches higher courts.

“I think it could have broader implications. I think that’s one of the dangerous parts of this kind of litigation, for sure, and the higher up it goes the broader its reach could be,” said Joanna Woolman, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

ADF and True North have asked the federal court to bar the state from allowing transgender players from competing in girls sports, arguing Title IX stipulates schools must preserve “competition in the female sports category” for athletes assigned female at birth. Trump’s executive orders are referenced heavily as reinforcement of their argument.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of three players from Maple Grove High and Farmington High who raised concerns over an unfair play environment created by Minnesota’s policy, giving the example of a pitcher on an opposing team who was born male.

The Minnesota State High School League’s board of directors in 2015 voted to allow transgender athletes in girls sports. Following Trump’s executive orders, the league responded that it would review its policy but kept it in place.

In his suit against the Trump administration, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the president’s orders do not supersede Minnesota’s protections and complying with the White House’s orders would violate state law, referred to as one of the “strongest civil rights laws in the country,” by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in a prior statement to the Star Tribune.

Any outcome of the case, True North’s general counsel Renee Carlson told the Star Tribune, is likely to have effects beyond Minnesota.

“This case will test whether federal law, specifically Title IX, still guarantees equal athletic opportunity for girls across the country,” Carlson said. “A strong ruling that affirms the validity of sex-separated sports could lead to action by other courts that reinforces protections for female athletes in other states.”

The parties are next due in court July 7.

Jim Paulsen of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.