Court Rules Miss USA Pageant Can Limit Contestants to ‘Natural Born Females’

In Green v. Miss United States of America LLC, the Ninth Circuit decided that a beauty pageant operator has the right to limit contestants to “natural born females.”

Anita Green, who self-identifies as “an openly transgender female,” sued the Miss United States of America pageant last year for excluding transgender contestants and violating the Oregon Public Accommodations Act (OPAA).

The court said that applying the OPAA to the company would violate its free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The said that it was equally important to let the company express its “ideal vision of American womanhood.”

“Miss United States of America expresses its message in part through whom it chooses as its contestants, and the First Amendment affords it the right to do so,” Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote for the majority.

In a dissenting opinion, 9th Circuit Judge Susan Graber, a Bill Clinton appointee, said the court should consider non-constitutional grounds for decision before weighing constitutional issues.

“Because the majority opinion inappropriately seeks to have it both ways, and does so without first determining which option is the legally correct one, I must dissent,” she wrote.