More than 400 LGBTQ and civil rights groups on Monday urged lawmakers to reject legislation that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, claiming the measure, which the House is expected to consider this week, “would harm women and girls and undermine civil rights for all students.”
The letter, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella group of U.S. civil rights organizations, argues that preventing transgender and gender-nonconforming youths from participating in school sports nationwide will further isolate and stigmatize an already vulnerable population.
“If schools mark some students effectively as outcasts, they foster an environment where no student is included and safe,” the letter states.
Republicans last week reintroduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would amend Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools and education programs that receive government funding — to prohibit schools from allowing transgender female athletes to participate in athletic programs or activities “designated for women or girls.”
It defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) is the primary sponsor of the measure in the House, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is leading the measure’s introduction in the Senate. Both men sponsored identical bills in the last Congress, with mixed success.
The House, which first passed Steube’s bill in 2023, is expected to consider the measure again on Tuesday. Passing the bill is one of House Republicans’ top priorities in the new Congress, according to a rules package adopted earlier this month. Last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) took the necessary procedural steps to place the measure on the Senate calendar, teeing up a vote in the coming weeks.
The bill has the backing of 97 Republicans in the House and Senate, who argue such legislation is needed to maintain fairness in women’s sports and protect female athletes who are cisgender, or not transgender, from injury.
Concerned Women for America, a conservative evangelical Christian organization, called on Congress to pass the bill in a blog post on Friday. The group, which sued the University of Pennsylvania in 2022 for allowing Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, to compete on the college’s women’s team, said policies inclusive of transgender student-athletes at public schools amount to “federally funded discrimination.”
Monday’s letter, which includes signatures from the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Advocates for Trans Equality, calls the measure’s supporters “wolves in sheep’s clothing” whose “agenda is not about the rights of women and girls.”
“Although the authors of the legislation represent themselves as serving the interests of cisgender girls and women, this legislation does not address the longstanding barriers all girls and women have faced in their pursuit of athletics,” the letter states.
“Instead of providing for equal facilities, equipment, and travel, or any other strategy that women athletes have been pushing for for decades, the bill cynically veils an attack on transgender people as a question of athletics policy.”
The bill’s nebulous language and “intrusive focus on scrutiny of students’ bodies,” the letter argues, will effectively bar cisgender women and girls with intersex traits — natural variations in sex characteristics that differ from what is typically considered male or female — from competing in school sports and “invite scrutiny and harassment of any other student perceived by anyone as not conforming to sex stereotypes.”
Opponents of similar laws passed in more than two dozen states say such restrictions will inevitably fuel speculation about whether female athletes look feminine enough to compete in women’s sports without having their gender questioned.
A former Utah state school board member was censured last year after she falsely suggested in a Facebook post that a 16-year-old student-athlete in her district is transgender, resulting in a wave of online threats to the student’s social media accounts.
The Utah High School Activities Association in 2022 said it had investigated a high school athlete over her gender after parents complained that the student, who is not transgender, might have violated a state law banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.
In October, an Oregon school district requested that Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) campaign take down two ads targeting transgender athletes because they included a photograph of two minor girls who are not transgender and whose parents did not give the Cruz campaign permission to use the photo.
