Idaho banned transgender women and girls from participating in collegiate sports teams in 2020, sparking a wave of similar bans in other states. including Alabama. A U.S. district court blocked the law later that year on the grounds that it might violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit confirmed the court’s decision in Junewhich led to an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

The brief argued that the Equal Protection Clause does not require states to define sex as gender identity.

“While the underlying questions may be thorny and complicated for state legislatures, school boards and athletic commissioners, the legal issues are straightforward,” the attorneys general wrote.

Alabama is involved in ongoing litigation because of the ban on certain gender reassignment treatments for transgender people under 19 years of age.

Shannon Minter, Vice President of Legal Affairs of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)said in a phone call Wednesday afternoon that the document was “very unconvincing” and “created straw men rather than addressing the actual legal issues the case raises.”

The NCLR is involved in Alabama’s gender-affirming care case.

Minter said the mandate does not address Bostock v. Clayton Countya 2020 case that ruled that transgender status is protected in employment disputes.

“That’s exactly the problem in these cases, as Bostock did in an employment discrimination case, and the legal question in those cases is whether the reasoning, the reasoning in Bostock, also applies to discrimination against transgender students in schools. And yet this brief doesn’t even mention the most important case,” he said.

Cardelia Howell-Diamond, who has two transgender children, wrote in a text message Wednesday afternoon that the laws do not keep “men” out of transgender sports, but rather impact women and girls who do not live up to the level of femininity deemed necessary.

Howell-Diamond referred to the treatment of Imane Khelif, the Olympic boxing champion who faced criticism and false claims about her gender online. French prosecutors are investigating harassment allegations, according to the Associated Press.

“This is a game where only women lose,” she wrote. “It’s a power play to continue to control women’s bodies, what they can do, where they can be, and what it means to be the right kind of woman. All of this is based on the fear of men losing their power. Transgender children are simply the first easy targets.”

Updated at 7:03 a.m. with a statement from the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition.