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The TERF Report · Aug 13, 2026

Minnesota’s lawsuit against Trump over Title IX has been mostly, but not entirely, dismissed

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Kara Dansky · The TERF Report

August 13, 2026

This post is about Monday’s news that a federal district court has mostly, but not entirely, dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Attorney General of Minnesota against the Trump Administration over Title IX (which prohibits sex discrimination in education).

But first …

As planned, a task force of team presidents and general managers with the WNBA met yesterday to see if they could work out what a woman is. They were unsuccessful. Jennifer Sey has written an amazing parody of what the task force’s first meeting might have looked like, and it turns out she was not far off at all.

Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA, of which I used to serve as President and member of the Board of Directors) has filed two important amicus (friend-of-the-court) briefs in federal court.

  • In Gays Against Groomers v. Garcia, WDI USA supports two individuals who used accurate sex-based language during a committee hearing before the Colorado state legislature on a bill to allow convicted felons to legally change their names to match their “gender identities.” When they did so, committee members interrupted and silenced them. In the case of one witness, committee members struck her testimony from the public record. Lawyers with the Institute for Free Speech think this violated the individuals’ free speech rights under the First Amendment, and have taken the case all the way to the US Supreme Court. WDI USA agrees, and emphasizes that the committee members’ conduct was also in conflict with Article IV of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. Read more here.

  • In Chandler v. Macomber, WDI USA teamed up with Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG, on whose board I serve) and the group Women Are Real to support the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) and six incarcerated women who have sued the state over SB 132, which permits men to be housed in the women’s prison on the basis of their woman “gender identities.” WoLF argues that this violates the women’s rights under the 1st, 8th, and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution. The brief was filed in support of WoLF and the incarcerated women before the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Read more here.

It was an honor and a pleasure to work with all of these groups on these briefs. The Gays Against Groomers brief quotes JK Rowling extensively. We quoted her 2024 statements inviting the Scottish police to arrest her under Scotland’s new “hate speech” law for referring to men as men. I don’t know if JK Rowling had ever been quoted in a brief before the US Supreme Court before, but if not, now she has!

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has conceded that its Standards of Care Version 8 is just one opinion among many when it comes to the world of so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors and young people. “Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism for hormones and surgeries that poison and harm people.

This new concession comes after years of WPATH (and the AAP and the Endocrine Society) insisting to courts, other medical associations, and, well, everyone, that there was a “strong medical consensus” in favor of such “care.” This is all explained in a June 2025 law review article titled “The Facade of Medical Consensus” about the case of US v. Skrmetti:

Long before Skrmetti, activists understood that to win the controversial legal “battle” on gender-transition treatments for minors, the medical field needed to present “a united front.” Through coordinated efforts, these authoritative groups framed procedures like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries such as double mastectomies as “standard medical care, supported by major medical organizations in the United States.” This perceived consensus became a powerful tool in litigation, often used to argue that state-level restrictions were medically unfounded and constitutionally suspect. If states enacted laws restricting these procedures for minors, attorneys could seek injunctions, citing a “medical consensus [that] is grounded in a wealth of studies” that undermined the states’ safety concerns. Indeed, after states began enacting such restrictions, opponents described the laws as extreme departures from scientific norms and even alleged that they “make it a crime for doctors to act ethically” and increase the likelihood that “some [transgender-identifying children] will die.”

Between WPATH acknowledging that its Standards of Care are just an opinion and the ACLU being in retreat mode when it comes to self-identification for men in women’s sports, those of us who care about women’s sex-based rights and the material reality of sex might just be on our way to winning.

It has been announced that taxpayers will no longer be forced to pay for so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors through Medicaid. Good (but taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for adults’ “gender-affirming care” either)! If you would like to learn about a recent case in which federal employees are seeking to force taxpayers to pay for their and their kids’ so-called “gender-affirming care,” you can do so here (but there’s a paywall).

The lovely women of the group Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights have produced a delightful one-minute video celebrating female-only sports. While we fight for the rights of people to use accurate sex-based language in America, the Canadian women have it much worse. In Canada, you can actually go to jail for so-called ‘hate speech” (which presumably, includes referring to a man as a man).

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an order allowing the state of Oregon to house male prison inmates in men’s prisons. Readers may be surprised to learn that the very blue state of Oregon is actually fighting to keep men out of the state’s women’s prison (over the objections of male convicted pedophiles, rapists, and murderers). I wrote about the case here. I’m happy to see this development, and I hope it bodes well for the Chandler case, which is also before the 9th Circuit. One of the judges on the panel ruling on the side of Oregon (and against the male convicted pedophiles, rapists, and murderers) is Judge VanDyke. Judge VanDyke earlier this year said that a case involving a man demanding entry into a nude female-only spa is a case about “swinging dicks.” I wrote about the case here.

Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) was one of eight Democrats who voted yes on HR 2616, the Parental Rights Over The Education and Care of Their Kids Act, in May. I wrote about that bill here and here and here. The bill would mandate that schools obtain parental consent before “transing” a kid. Vindman is a military veteran. He also has national security experience. Yesterday, The Advocate reported that he went to a “predominantly Republican Virginia county Tuesday night expecting to tell local Democrats why they needed to help him win reelection and put their party back in control of Congress,” but that “[i]nstead, the first-term Democrat spent much of his visit defending himself to transgender members of his own party before leaving after a profane confrontation with a constituent.”

Apparently, one person said, ““Congressman, you need to shut up and listen,” to which he replied that he was listening and that he had stayed in the meeting, despite “you all attacking me.” The person then said, “Shut the f*ck up.” This is just how things work in the land of gender flippity-flam. Rep. Vindman did one single tiny thing for sanity by voting to require schools to obtain parental consent before “transing” a kid. That’s it. And that was enough to earn a “shut the f*ck up” from someone in his own party.

Again, this post is about Monday’s news that a federal judge has dismissed most, but not all, of Minnesota’s lawsuit against the Trump Administration regarding Title IX. The administration understands that sex is real, and Minnesota’s Attorney General (Keith Ellison) and Governor (Tim Walz) do not. Minnesota is mostly losing in court, but in some ways, winning. Read on to learn more.

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Read the original on karadansky.substack.com

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