Republicans in Congress have introduced a bill blocking schools from allowing trans students to participate in sports.
A new bill introduced by House Rep. Greg Steube (R-Florida) on Thursday would withhold funding from athletics organizations that allow trans students to participate in sex-segreated programs. The legislation, HR 426, is vaguely worded and doesn’t explain how schools are expected to identify trans students. It merely states that students’ “sex shall be recognized solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
Steube’s bill is co-sponsored by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), a QAnon supporter and conspiracy theorist who has falsely claimed the school shootings in Parkland, Florida and Newtown, Connecticut were staged. Greene also believes voter fraud swayed the 2020 election, which has been widely debunked by numerous experts.
“No biological males in women's sports,” Greene wrote in a Thursday tweet, echoing a frequent TERF talking point.
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In a press release, Steube says the bill ensures “a fair playing field” in youth sports, a topic in which he never expressed previous interest until there was an opportunity to attack queer people. “We must protect our female athletes from being forced to compete against biological male athletes in competitive sports,” he said.
While the statement claims that legislators have “heard heartbreaking stories of young women and girls from across the country who compete in sports but are losing games and even scholarships to biological males who choose to identify as women and girls,” it does not cite any of these claims specifically. It also neglects to include research that backs up its claims that trans women have a competitive advantage in sports.
Steube notes that the legislation is supported by the United Conference of Catholic Bishops, a group with a long history of opposing LGBTQ+ equality. The organization has denounced homosexuality as “contrary to the natural law” and supports “therapy” to change one’s sexual orientation. The UCCB says “there is no consensus” on the subject of orientation change efforts, despite the fact that every leading medical organization in the U.S. has denounced the harmful, sometimes deadly practice.
The federal legislation is similar to dozens of anti-trans bills introduced in state legislatures across the country since 2016. Last year, Republicans were able to pass HB 500, a nearly identical measure banning trans girls from playing on school sports teams in alignment with their gender identity. It’s currently being challenged in court.
This year, similar legislation has already been tabled in states like Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee, according to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans. An anti-trans sports bill is likely to receive a full vote in the Montana House of Representatives next week after passing through committee on Thursday by an 11-8 margin.
This is far from Steube’s first attempt to target trans people:. He teamed up with former House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who supported conversion therapy before running for Congress, for a similar effort last year. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia), who donated her part of her Congressional salary to an anti-LGBTQ+ group, introduced a companion bill in the Senate prior to being defeated by Rev. Raphael Warnock in a January special election.
Steube’s bill is unlikely to make any progress in Congress. After Loeffler and fellow Republican David Perdue came up short in the runoffs, Democrats now control both houses of the federal legislature.
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