Maine girl involved in trans athlete battle reveals how states policies hurt her childhood and sports career

Cassidy Carlisle was in seventh grade when she had to change in the same locker room as a transgender student, she said. During a gym class at Presque Isle Middle School in northern Maine six years ago, she said she walked into the locker room to find a biological male who would change with her and other girls.She alleges she was told by administrators that if she tried to avoid changing with the trans student, she would risk being late to class. “That was really my first experience in just knowing that something isn’t right, but not knowing what to do with that,” Carlisle told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.Fox News Digital has reached out to Presque Isle Middle School for comment.Gender identity was first included in the Maine Human Rights Act as part of the definition of sexual orientation in 2005.In 2021, the law was amended to add gender identity as its own protected class, joining other protected classes such as sex, sexual orientation, disability, race, color and religion.The law specifically says that denying a person equal opportunity in athletic programs is education discrimination.The transgender student was only in the girls locker room for about a week, Carlisle claims, before mysteriously vanishing.

But the memory of the experience stuck with her. The memory especially stuck with her in her junior year of high school, when she found out she would be competing with a trans athlete on the state Nordic skiing team. It was an athlete with whom she was familiar.She had already lost to the trans athlete in cross-country competitions in previous years.When her father told her she would have to face the athlete again in skiing, Carlisle didn’t believe it was happening. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s only something I kind of hear about on the news.

… It’s not going to happen to me,” Cassidy recalled.But it did happen to her.“The defeat that comes with that in that moment is heartbreaking,” Carlisle said.“I’m just in ...