Miss North Carolina USA Lost Her Crown as Miss USA Condemned 'Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia'

Brittany Boltinhouse is no longer Miss North Carolina USA. The state organization that runs the competition ended her reign in consultation with Miss USA — and Miss USA's chief executive then published a separate statement naming racism, homophobia and transphobia.

On August 5, Miss USA CEO Thom Brodeur announced that Brittany Boltinhouse would no longer represent North Carolina — her reign, he wrote, had “come to an end” — weeks before the national competition. In a statement posted to Instagram, Brodeur wrote that the organization “does not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia, nor language that strips any person of their dignity — whoever they are.”

“A title here isn't a trinket,” the statement read. “It is a position of trust, extended by an organization and accepted by a woman who agrees to carry a standard in public. When that standard is broken, the title cannot continue as though nothing happened.” The conduct at issue, he said, was not a single moment but behavior over an extended period.

A Blaize Productions, which runs the state competition, issued its own statement saying the decision was not made lightly and followed what it called a thorough review of recently surfaced information. Brodeur said the decision was reached together with Boltinhouse and her state directors. First runner-up Myla Hadley takes the title, and will represent North Carolina at the 75th Miss USA competition in Miami on August 27.

What has not been established

Here is the part that needs saying before anything else: nobody has published the material at the center of this.

Neither Miss USA nor A Blaize Productions has specified the conduct or released any posts. Them reported that social media users had circulated older posts attributed to Boltinhouse, and stated plainly that it could not independently verify them. Newsweek reported that the controversy centered on archived posts allegedly made between 2017 and 2019, and noted that organizers have not made the posts public. WBTV, citing sister station WITN, reported only that posts described as inflammatory had resurfaced after her win.

So what is actually on the record is this: Miss USA says conduct occurred that broke its standards, and Brodeur named the categories — racism, homophobia, transphobia — without specifying what she is said to have done. A Blaize went no further than standards, values and the totality of the circumstances. What has circulated online has been reported by outlets that took care to say they could not stand it up. We are not going to characterize posts nobody has verified.

Her account

Boltinhouse, 27, was crowned at the state competition on June 28. On the day the decision was announced she posted a long, oblique note about being careful whose advice you take, as NBC News reported. Two days later she gave an interview to the Carolina Journal.

“As of today I believe and think I was stripped from my title because of my political stance and my belief system as a conservative Christian woman,” she told the Journal, in comments reported by Newsweek. She added that she is proud of her faith and her standards. Fox News reported further remarks from the same interview: she called the loss a blessing in disguise, and, asked about her support for President Donald Trump, she said she did not know whether it had played a role. “I wasn't really given anything,” she said.

One detail matters for reading all of that fairly: she told the outlet she is bound by a confidentiality agreement and cannot discuss what led to the decision, according to Fox News. Whatever else is true, she is describing a process she says she is not free to describe.

When Brodeur announced the removal, he said a statement from Boltinhouse was coming, that he had read it, and that it contained ownership, accountability and apology. We found no report of that statement being published. What she told the Carolina Journal two days later was that she believes she lost the title over her politics and her faith. Newsweek found no public evidence that her politics drove the decision, and reported that as of August 6, neither organization had pointed to her beliefs or her vote as a reason.

Why this one registers — our read

Everything in this section is our reading rather than reporting.

Miss USA is not an obvious venue for this argument, which is what makes the wording worth noticing. The organization has its own history on the subject: Kataluna Enriquez won Miss Nevada USA in 2021, becoming the first trans woman to take a Miss USA state title, as Them noted in its coverage. Read against that, naming transphobia as disqualifying conduct looks less like a departure than a continuation.

What struck us more is where the rest of Brodeur's statement went. He used it to argue against the public judgment he says Boltinhouse is already facing. “There is a young woman at the center of this,” he wrote. “She has been named, examined, and judged in public in a way that most of us would not survive, and she is still a human being with a family, a future, and a life ahead of her that is longer than this part of her journey.” He added: “I have never believed that accountability requires cruelty, or that holding a line means enjoying the fall of the person who crossed it.”

He also drew the line we would have drawn. Whatever she is accused of, he wrote, it does not give anyone “permission to strip someone of their humanity, which is, after all, precisely the thing we are holding her accountable for doing to others.”