Why Are Feminists Allowing Rights for Women and Girls to Be Tossed Aside?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the rights of girls and women. Feminists have been fighting for different rights for women for over one hundred years since they fought for the right to vote. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week in the Harris Funeral Home case that the term sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity and endangered many rights that currently belong to women and girls.


            Kate Anderson, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), spoke about the case with Lauren Evans at Problematic Women. Virginia Allen and Lauren Evans at The Daily Signal reported on the interview in an article titled “Problematic Women: How Women Lose in Supreme Court’s Decision to Redefine Sex.”


            According to Anderson, Alliance Defending Freedom “is a nonprofit legal organization” that takes “cases across the country promoting religious freedom and freedom of speech for everyone.” They take their cases “pro bono” and are “supported by ministry friends that help us do the work that we do with no cost to our clients.”


            The discussion focused on the decision affecting the Harris Funeral Home. Anderson described the case as a question about “the meaning of the term ‘sex’ in federal employment law, whether ‘sex’ means biology, as it always has, or whether it will be changed to include the concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation.” The Harris Funeral Homes is “a fifth-generation family business in the Detroit area who had a male funeral director who had worked for them for about six years, always abiding by their sex-specific dress code.”


            The problem arose when the man, after working for six years as a man, informed his employer that he “planned to present and dress as a woman while working with grieving families.” The owner considered how this new situation would impact the employee, other employees (many of whom were elderly women), and his clients because “there was only one restroom for women at the facility.” 

The owner decided that the situation would not work and that the company “needed the sex-specific dress code to be in place” that “was in accord with both industry standard and federal law.” The ACLU decided to make it a test case and took the funeral home to court. They learned on Monday that they were successful. Anderson explained how the decision would affect “the way that the law is interpreted: 

What the court did was change the term “sex” in federal employment law to mean, and include, sexual orientation and gender identity. We’re talking about a law that has always operated primarily to protect equal opportunities for women where biology matters.

So, this is a drastic change in the law that calls into question whether women are going to be protected as they have been. If men can be women under the law, then those protections really go away.

You see women both on the far left of the political spectrum and on the far right of the political spectrum who are deeply concerned with this.

            The ruling was somewhat limited to the federal employment law, Title VII. However, Anderson explained that “the same logic can apply elsewhere, and we have every expectation that activists who want to see this change in the law, this splitting from the idea that biology does determine sex, the activists that want to see that happen will use this logic in other case.”


            Anderson raised the topic of a problem in Connecticut concerning women’s track and field. “Two biological boys who identify as female, over the last two years, took 15 state track and field championship records that used to be held by nine different girls.” This means that they took all “the athletic and scholarship opportunities that go” with the championship records. When questioned by parents, Connecticut officials said, “Well, girls have a right to compete, but they don’t have a right to win.” 


            Girls may not have the right to win, but they have the right to compete on a level playing field. Girls and women at all levels could be affected by the new ruling. Even though the employment question comes under Title VII and sports comes under Title IX, the same logic could be applied. We have already seen cases where boys are allowed in girls restrooms and locker rooms. It appears that the rights of girls and women are slowly being taken away.


            Anderson brought up a case right here in my town where city officials tried to force Hope Center – a women’s shelter for women escaping abuse, rape, trauma, and domestic violence – to allow biological males to sleep in the same area as the abused women. Alliance Defending Freedom intervened and stopped the proposed action. Hope Center serves both men and women but has a special place for women to sleep where they can feel safe.


            Title VII has a religious exemption to protect religious organizations. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act “protects religious people to live according to their beliefs” still applies. However, there will be activists trying to force their beliefs on other people. The new ruling out of the Supreme Court will most likely bring havoc to our justice system for girls and women. It destroyed rights that women and girls have fought for and enjoyed for many years.