Zachary Greenwald’s Minnesota high school dance team will be competing in a conference championship next weekend. The varsity dancers will line up on a basketball court and perform the jazz routine they have been practicing all season, with its rainstorm-themed choreography.

But Zachary will be sitting on the sidelines, as a team manager, reminding the girls to keep their toes pointed and legs straight. While the 16-year-old high school junior has wanted to compete alongside his friends on the dance team since the seventh grade, the Minnesota State High School League does not allow him to — because he’s not a girl.

“I was excluded for something I felt I couldn’t change,” Zachary said. “It was really upsetting.”

Zachary is one of two Minnesota high school boys who are suing the league over the rule, calling it unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Lawyers for Zachary and Dmitri Moua, who attends Roseville Area High School, filed a lawsuit in July accusing the Minnesota State High School League of violating the boys' rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and Title IX of the federal Education Amendments of 1972.

A federal judge rejected the request, but the boys’ legal team appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and expect that court to issue a ruling within the next month, said Caleb R. Trotter, a lawyer representing the boys who is with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a California-based law firm that has worked on two similar cases. Read more via Washington Post