WASHINGTON, D.C. – The US House of Representatives passed legislation that would ban transgender women and girls from competing in female school sports. Republicans are calling this a ‘win’ for women’s rights. Opponents say this legislation targets people and is discriminatory.
The bill is called the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act”. It passed on a 219- 203 vote. The bill says the legislation would amend Title nine to prohibit schools that receive federal funding from allowing people whose sex is male to participate in sports designated for women or girls. The bill defines sex as based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
Representative Jack Bergman (R- MI) was one of the 90 plus republicans who co-sponsored this bill. We’ve reached out to his office several times about this before the House took it up for a vote and we reached out after the vote, but still have not heard back from him.
The legislation is getting pushback from democrats. They said this is the latest attempt by republicans to intensify culture wars and transgender rights in America.
“House republicans are teaming up and believing in people who believe in basic fairness,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R- LA). “And it should’ve been an unanimous vote but with the playing of politics up here, when people go home, and they’re in their schools and they’re competing, they just want to play on a level playing field.”
“They’ll say ‘oh transgender doesn’t appear in this bill’ but let’s not kid ourselves, this legislation at the very intent is to harm and stigmatize, isolate and make the pariahs and this is simply wrong,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D- CA).
Even though this passed the republican-controlled House, this legislation has no chance in the slim democratic majority controlled Senate.
