JayCee Cooper Settles With USA Powerlifting, Closing a Seven-Year Trans Discrimination Fight

The longest-running trans athlete discrimination case in the United States ended on April 28 with a settlement between Minnesota powerlifter JayCee Cooper and USA Powerlifting, the federation that barred her from women’s competition in 2018 because she is transgender. The terms are confidential, but Cooper’s lawyers at Gender Justice confirmed the agreement includes a financial component and resolves all outstanding claims.

The settlement comes roughly six months after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in October 2025 that USA Powerlifting’s blanket exclusion of trans women from the women’s category violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations. The high court rejected the federation’s argument that excluding trans women was justified by safety or competitive fairness concerns, sending the case back to district court for damages — a phase the parties have now resolved on their own.

A case that started before the trans sports backlash

Cooper filed her original complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 and her lawsuit in 2021, well before trans athlete bans became a defining wedge in US politics. At the time, USA Powerlifting argued that all trans women have a categorical “strength advantage” and that her testosterone suppression therapy was itself disqualifying because the federation banned therapeutic use exemptions for the underlying medication.

District courts disagreed. The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in March 2024 that the federation had discriminated against Cooper on the basis of both gender identity and sex. USA Powerlifting appealed to the state Supreme Court, which used the case as an opportunity to clarify how the Human Rights Act applies to transgender plaintiffs in public-accommodations settings — a ruling that will outlast the parties involved.

What the settlement does and doesn’t decide

Settlements close cases without setting binding precedent on the merits. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s October 2025 ruling, however, is precedent — and it stands. The decision means any sports federation operating in Minnesota that categorically excludes trans women from women’s events runs the same legal risk USA Powerlifting did, regardless of how the federation frames its policy.

USA Powerlifting said in a statement that it disagrees with Minnesota’s interpretation and that its future operations in the state are “uncertain.” That phrasing — Minnesota is “out of step with science” — has become a familiar refrain from sports bodies losing in court while telling supporters they are right on the substance. It does not change the legal reality on the ground.

For Cooper, who has spent more than seven years as the public face of a case she did not initially set out to make a national fight, the settlement is an ending. She told reporters last fall, after the Supreme Court ruling, that her case was never about being a star athlete: it was about being allowed to compete at all.

The wider context

The settlement lands in a moment when trans athlete inclusion is moving in opposite directions across jurisdictions. The IOC announced its trans women ban earlier this year. The Eighth Circuit ruled in February that Minnesota’s trans-inclusive high school sports policy survives Title IX challenge. The DC Circuit has weighed in on trans women in federal prisons. And the US Supreme Court has so far declined to take a sports-specific case, leaving the patchwork in place.

What Cooper’s case demonstrates is that state-level human rights statutes — laws written decades ago to ban discrimination in places like restaurants and gyms — can be powerful tools for trans plaintiffs even when federal law is hostile. Minnesota’s ruling is now the leading state Supreme Court decision on trans athlete inclusion. Other state courts will read it.

It is worth noting what the case did not do. It did not establish a constitutional right to compete. It did not prevent USA Powerlifting from operating elsewhere on its preferred terms. It did not stop other federations from writing exclusion policies. What it did do is confirm that in at least one state, treating “trans woman” as a categorical disqualification from women’s competition is illegal — and that a federation that does it will pay.

For Cooper, that is enough. For everyone else watching, it is a reminder that the slow grind of state human rights law is still doing meaningful work for trans athletes while the federal landscape burns.