Congressional Republicans have advanced legislation that would amend the gender-equity law known as Title IX to explicitly prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on school and college sports teams that align with their gender identity.
The bill specifies that recipients of federal funds cannot permit people born as male to compete in women’s sports. It recognizes sex as based entirely on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth” — a definition that the bill appears to apply to just athletics participation, not Title IX as a whole.
The House on Tuesday passed the Protection of Women and Sports Act by a vote of 218 to 206. Two Democrats supported the bill, alongside all Republicans.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, is sponsoring the Senate version of the bill, and Rep. Gregory Steube, Republican of Florida, is sponsoring the House of Representatives version. Both have dozens of co-sponsors.
The Biden Education Department proposed regulations in 2023 governing the participation of transgender athletes, but formally withdrew them in December. The administration did, however, codify protections for transgender students outside of sports participation, such as guaranteeing them access to affirmative bathrooms and locker rooms.
Now, in the waning days of the Biden administration, those protections have been thrown out in federal court along with the rest of the rule. Transgender rights were the most controversial element of the new regulations, which were previously blocked in more than half the states and at many individual institutions.
Donald J. Trump has vowed to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports on his first day in office. The Republican-controlled Senate is likely to vote on Tuberville’s measure in the coming weeks.
Legal experts say there’s no guarantee the bill will pass, given narrow margins for Republicans in both chambers and the bill’s failure in a previous term. Whether it passes or not, though, the bill offers a taste of Republicans’ higher-education priorities under the second Trump administration.
At the state level, rules governing participation of transgender athletes vary significantly, said Kristen Thorsness, a higher-education lawyer at the firm Bond, Schoeneck, and King. “Some states have protections for transgender student-athletes that allow them to compete and use facilities with their teammates,” Thorsness says. “Other states have bans that prohibit transgender athletes from competing, from using locker rooms, from using bathrooms” that align with their identity.
Already this legislative session, state lawmakers in Nebraska, Georgia, and other states have introduced bills to restrict transgender people’s participation in school and college sports. Nevada’s lieutenant governor assembled a task force last week to focus on the cause of banning transgender women from women’s sports.
The number of transgender athletes in organized sports at K-12 schools and colleges is very small. Charlie Baker, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, told a Senate panel in December that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender athletes active in the NCAA. The organization follows guidelines set by each sport’s national governing body in determining when and how transgender athletes can participate.
Still, controversies arise. The issue of transgender participation embroiled college volleyball in the fall, when several teams called off matches against San Jose State University over reports that it had a transgender player. In November, 11 current and former players and an associate coach sued the Mountain West Conference and San Jose State for allowing the athlete to compete. The suit asked for the player to be dropped from the conference tournament, but a judge denied that request.
Under the Biden administration’s abandoned athletics proposal, colleges would not have been allowed to categorically ban transgender athletes from competing on teams that matched their gender identity, but they would have been able to limit participation for “educational” purposes, like preventing injury and ensuring fair play.
“No matter what bill actually comes through, there is no protection as it stands,” says LaKeisha C. Marsh, chair of the higher education and collegiate athletics practice at the law firm Akerman. She added that the vacating of Biden’s Title IX rule last week provides fuel for the bill.
Helen A. “Nellie” Drew, director of the Center for the Advancement of Sport at the University at Buffalo, says she is not sure legislators will put in the effort to get the bill passed. “A lot of these bills that are being floated, both at the federal and state level, are simply attempts to stir up emotion for political purposes,” she says.
Spokespeople for Tuberville and Steube did not return requests for clarification on the intent of the bill. The Education Department also did not return a request for comment.
Democrats, however, are far from united when it comes to the issue of transgender athletes’ participation. Representatives Seth Moulton, of Connecticut, and Tom Suozzi, of New York, have both raised concerns about transgender women competing against cisgender women. Suozzi told reporters this week that he is likely to vote no on the bill, however.
Whether or not the bill does pass, Trump is likely to beat Congress to the punch.
“During his first administration, President Trump showed that he was very willing to use the power of the executive to make proclamations to essentially do an end run around Congress,” Thorsness says. “And I think we’ll see more of that to the extent that Congress doesn’t play along with his agendas.”
