The Minnesota Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in a case involving a trans-identifying male competitive weightlifter who is suing U.S.A. Powerlifting (USAPL) for refusing to allow him to compete in the women’s division, citing discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Jaycee Cooper has been in ongoing legal disputes since 2019, after USAPL emailed him to inform him that his application to participate in the Minnesota Women’s State Championship had been denied.
According to a complaint lodged on Cooper’s behalf by trans activist legal group Gender Justice, Cooper first began competing in women’s powerlifting in 2018. While training for the Women’s State Championships, which took place on January 19, 2019, Cooper was informed that he would not be granted permission to participate.
“On December 5, 2018, USAPL emailed Ms. Cooper, informing her that she could not compete because she is transgender,” reads the May 2024 complaint referring to Cooper with feminine pronouns. “USAPL then revoked her competition card, which means that she was not eligible to compete in future USAPL events. USAPL MN then went on to hold both championship events, at which all transgender women athletes were prohibited from competing.”
USAPL published a statement clarifying their policy regarding athletes who claim a transgender status in 2019. “Identifying as one sex does not defy the factual physical differences between sexes that exist regardless of sex reassignment or hormone suppression,” the statement reads. “The assertion of gender choice, although legal to change in parts of the world, does not erase the dimorphic differences of sex,
formalized at birth and continually developing throughout the lifespan, that have direct implications to performance advantages.”
In 2021, I acted as an expert witness for USA Powerlifting (USAPL) in JayCee Cooper v USA Powerlifting (62-CV-21-211, State of Minnesota District Court). As part of my testimony, I performed an analysis of performance in male and female weightlifting competitions. https://t.co/Oy61YLvAYU
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) August 16, 2023
Additionally, USAPL’s website had released a transgender participation policy which states: “Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While MTF may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over than of a female.”
However, Gender Justice insists that Cooper, who was “assigned male at birth” is in fact a “woman” who has been the victim of “discrimination” for being barred from competing against women. In 2019, Cooper was recorded as weighing 280 pounds, and had already won two titles in the women’s category despite having only entered the sport the year before and set a new benchpress record with a 214.5-pound lift.
Cooper has also threatened women who oppose his participation in the female division. In 2022, women’s sports advocate Beth Stelzer, founder of the non-profit Save Women’s Sports, revealed that she had been issued a subpoena from Cooper threatening her with legal action. Stelzer, herself a powerlifter who has credited the sport with empowering her after surviving domestic abuse, began her advocacy in direct response to Cooper’s participation in women’s powerlifting.
“Last month, I received messages from a number of women in the powerlifting community who expressed concern about the fact a male had registered to compete at the Powerlifting America Women’s National Championships in Texas,” Stelzer wrote for Feminist Current. “This wasn’t just any male — this was the same man who protested women’s right to single-sex competition back in 2019, inspiring me to start Save Women’s Sports.”
Stelzer detailed how she had attended the competition to protest Cooper’s inclusion in the female category, adding: “Jaycee Cooper was set to compete on April 3 for one of the most elite spots in powerlifting — a place on the USA team for the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF).”
One month later, Stelzer was sent a letter from Gender Justice which “threatened a lawsuit” which stated that “it was absolutely unacceptable that after being subpoenaed” Stelzer would continue to publicly advocate for female athletes.
Archived versions of Stelzer’s blog post show that she was required to disclose “every communication [she had] ever had with anyone about ‘transgender athletes, policies or laws relating to transgender people.'”
Additionally, she was told to provide to Gender Justice “documents showing ‘the amount and source of any past, current, or expected donations, compensation, or financial assistance relating to [Stelzer’s or Save Women’s Sports] advocacy on issues affecting transgender people.'”
Stelzer’s statement on the litigation threat was soon after deleted from her website and the Save Women’s Sports social media profiles were pulled.
The U.S. now has our very own Hayden/Yaniv.
— Emily (@EKaht) May 21, 2022
Trans-identified male Jaycee Cooper is using the legal system to file a frivolous subpoena (and threaten a frivolous lawsuit) against @BethStelzer . Check out the absurd demands of this subpoena, then please donate to help Beth. 🙏 https://t.co/Jr4L0VR724 pic.twitter.com/UR4APxBdzv
In the beginning of 2023, Ramsey County Judge Patrick Diamond ruled that Cooper “was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation and because of her sex,” and ordered USAPL to allow men to compete against women.
“The harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than. That is the very essence of separation and segregation and it is what the [Minnesota Human Rights Act] prohibits,” said Diamond.
However, in March 2024, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the decision.
“USA Powerlifting did not exclude Ms. Cooper because of her gender identity. She simply was excluded from a women’s division because she had gone through puberty as a male and has significant strength advantages,” said USAPL’s attorney Ansis Viksnins.
Cooper’s legal representation, Gender Justice, has previously secured the transfer of a violent male criminal into the female prison estate. As previously reported by Reduxx, at least five male convicts were transferred to MCF-Shakopee, Minnesota’s women-only prison, following the adoption of a gender identity policy by the Department of Corrections in January of 2023.
The policy was the direct result of litigation filed by Gender Justice on behalf of Craig ‘Christina’ Lusk, who was serving a five-year sentence for the possession of methamphetamine at the Moose Lake correctional facility for men. Lusk’s ex-wife came forward last year to tell The Daily Mail that during their relationship, he was “a big fat liar” and “violent.”
Due to Gender Justice’s activism, four other violent men have been placed in MCF-Shakopee, including two men who have been convicted of sexually abusing children. Female inmates have told Reduxx that the male transfers are making them feel “unsafe” and “scared” for their lives.
Yet Jess Braverman, the Legal Director at Gender Justice, has been received multiple honors and awards. For three consecutive years, from 2021 to 2023, Braverman was named Minnesota’s Attorney of the Year.
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