The chairman of the Idaho Republican Party is representing two college cross-country runners who support the state’s transgender athletics ban.

Raúl Labrador will represent Madison Kenyon and Mary Marshall, two student-athletes at Idaho State University.

Kenyon and Marshall filed legal documents Tuesday seeking to join in a lawsuit over Idaho’s transgender athletics ban. Kenyon and Marshall support the law, saying they have unfairly lost to a transgender runner who competes for the University of Montana.

“Female defeat by a male athlete is uniquely demoralizing due to the elemental inequity involved,” lawyers for Kenyon and Marshall wrote in a court brief.

Idaho’s transgender athletics law, the first in the nation, bans transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Barely two weeks after Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law, civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court.

Labrador served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He ran for governor in 2018, but lost to Little in the GOP primary. Labrador now practices law in Nampa.

Keith Ridler of the Associated Press wrote about Labrador’s connection to the case Thursday.