What is a woman? Louisiana Democrats might start having to explain themselves on this as their answer might endorse breaking state election law.
Across the state this Saturday, registered Republicans and Democrats will cast ballots for their respective party’s governing institutions, both for parish executive committees and state central committee. State law sets some parameters for this process for recognized political parties of a certain size, i.e. the two major parties.
Statute for composition of the state central committees gives parties two choices. One, they can follow the somewhat-structured R.S. 18:443.1, which mandates that the SCC have 210 seats with its members elected from each of the 105 state House districts, where males run separately and females run separately. Two, R.S. 18:443.2 mandates broadly that a governor of the party must serve on its SCC but the rest of members selection is left up to the party so long as it’s not inconsistent with state law.
Republicans have chosen the second option, which in its present form they managed to put in statute in 2020. Basically, their SCC has 230 seats with multiple members elected by state Senate districts in varying numbers depending upon past voting support for the GOP in those districts, plus has all statewide single executives and members of Congress as part of it, all as dictated by party rules adjusted from time to time.
But Democrats have stuck with the first option, which they implemented when they had essentially undisputed statewide power in 1987 as a symbolic way of supporting parity between the sexes. My, times have changed.
Because the outcome of the District 91B could end up breaking the law. Statute defines “A” slots as reserved for females and “B” for males. Among three candidates running for 91B is Britain Forsyth, described as a “transgender man” – in plain English, a biological female who self-conceives and wishes others to see her as “male.”
Of all the Democrats on the ballot in Orleans Parish when registering as a candidate, only Forsyth failed to designate biological sex, perhaps not feeling it applied (candidates are not required to fill out any of party, race, or sex), even though the law makes the male/female distinction only for qualifying under the option state Democrats have chosen that apparently should make essential acknowledging that information if the correct office for qualification can be determined. Indeed, the party’s bylaws explicitly state that it will follow R.S. 18:443.1.
This leads to a couple of questions if Forsyth wins and is seated as the male committee member. First, does Forsyth run afoul of the law – a biological female running for a slot reserved for a biological male – because that section of the law doesn’t explicitly define “female” as a person with female sex chromosomes, etc., as is done in other sections of the Louisiana Revised Statutes appertaining to other laws, such as with abortion or fairness in women’s sports? That definitions spring up elsewhere in statute may mean there is an implied meaning to it, but it might require some explicit defining legally specific to the particular law.
Second, can such a candidate’s election and even seating be ruled invalid because biological sex didn’t match the legal requirement? Typically, if an ineligible candidate qualifies, that candidate is allowed to run and even can win unless challenged in a court of law within seven working days of the close of qualification. That would seem to indicate Forsyth would be in the clear, and the law broken regardless. At that point, only the DSCC could remove Forsyth, and that’s hardly likely given the symbolic nature of it all that the party seems destined to endorse.
So, if Republicans wanted to have fun with this, they would change the law to define that only biological females, whether by birth or by sexual reassignment surgery with ongoing medications, qualify as a “woman” for the purposes of R.S. 18:443.1, and biological males for men-designated slots. This they could argue would allow for true equality between the sexes
This would bring publicity wins for the GOP, because you would have Democrats arguing against equality of the sexes in political representation. And deliciously so, because when Republicans changed the law in 2020 to enable them to follow their preferred governance structure, some Democrats decried that as aversion to women’s equality; thus, this move would expose Democrats’ hypocrisy and past unprincipled grandstanding.
If that turns your crank, hope that Forsyth pulls it off and we’ll see what drama unfolds.
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