Miss United States of America is legally able to reject men who claim that they’re women, an appeals court has ruled.
The beauty pageant’s “natural born female” requirement conveys a message and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment gives the pageant the ability to voice that message and enforce the rule, Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote in a Nov. 2 ruling.
“Forcing the Pageant to accept Green as a participant would fundamentally alter the Pageant’s expressive message in direct violation of the First Amendment,” VanDyke wrote for the majority of a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit….