Brittany Boltinhouse has spoken out after she was stripped of her Miss North Carolina USA 2026 title.

The Miss USA Organization announced on Aug. 5 that Boltinhouse was no longer Miss North Carolina USA 2026. She was crowned in June, and although the head of the organization, Thom Brodeur, did not specify why they came to the decision to remove the title, he did write on Instagram that they do “not tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia nor language that strips any person of their dignity.”

Brodeur also emphasized that holding the title is more than winning a pageant. “A title here isn’t a trinket. It is a position of trust, extended by an organization and accepted by a woman who agrees to carry a standard in public,” the national pageant head said. “When that standard is broken, the title cannot continue as though nothing happened,” he continued.

In the aftermath, Boltinhouse believed she was stripped of her title because of her views as a “conservative Christian woman.”

“I’m proud of my standards. I’m a proud conservative woman, but a Christian woman. I’m a God-fearing woman,” she told Carolina Journal editor-in-chief Donna King in an interview posted to YouTube on Friday, August 7.

“I’m very much at peace and I’m actually glad it happened to me and not some other young lady that, you know, maybe just probably wouldn’t make it through what I’m going through right now,” Boltinhouse revealed.

The 27-year-old added, “The scrutiny, my family behind it as well. But I will say that I’m very much at peace and I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I know who I am and I know what I can become.”

Later in the interview, when asked if the beauty queen believed that being a conservative was “disqualifying to a degree in the pageant system.”

“No, I think that in any system, not just in pageantry, I think you have the right to be a conservative in this country,” she responded. “It’s a constitutional right.”

She summarized the experience as: “All I can say is that I think and believe that my title was ripped from me because of my beliefs.”

According to Brodeur, the decision is not based on one single incident and is more about her “conduct over an extended period of time.”

While standing by the organization’s decision, Brodeur urged people to remember that Boltinhouse is “still a human being.”

“There is a young woman at the center of this,” he added. “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.”

Myla Hadley, who initially placed as the runner-up at the Miss North Carolina USA 2026 pageant, will now assume the crown and represent the state at Miss USA on Aug. 27. The winner of that pageant will represent the US at the Miss Universe pageant in November.