Arkansas Attorney General Rutledge leads a 12-multistate amicus brief defending Miss United States of America’s right to produce a pageant that expresses its view of women’s empowerment.
The brief seeks to uphold the pageant’s First Amendment right to require that contestants be biological females against a claim brought by an “openly transgender” individual.
“It’s simply not right that women have fought for decades to have equal opportunities and now women are being forced to compete against biological men in exclusively female activities,” said Arkansas Attorney General Rutledge. “Pageants that promote female empowerment are a constitutional right and should be exclusively for women.”
Attorney General Rutledge has been a fierce advocate for women’s rights in Arkansas by ensuring that female athletes in Arkansas have equal opportunity to compete in exclusively female sports. Her leadership in the crafting and passage of the Gender Integrity Reinforcement Legislation for Sports (GIRLS) Act is just the most recent example of her protecting Arkansas’s young women.
In addition to Rutledge’s leadership on the brief it was signed on to by attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.
