How Some States Are Moving to Restrict Transgender Women in Sports

By Gillian R. Brassil, NY Times, March 11, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/sports/transgender-athletes-bills.html?
searchResultPosition=1

Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi signed a bill on Thursday to bar transgender women and girls
from competing in women’s sports, a move Idaho made last year and one that has been recently
considered by lawmakers in two dozen other states.

“I proudly signed the Mississippi Fairness Act to ensure young girls are not forced to compete
against biological males,” Governor Reeves, a Republican, said on Twitter.

The bill, which would require public schools and universities to have athletes compete according
to their sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity, is scheduled to take effect on July 1
unless it is challenged in court.

“Governor Reeves signing this bill is incredibly disappointing and dangerous; the collateral
consequences on transgender youth are significant,” Alphonso David, president of the Human
Rights Campaign, said in a phone interview. “This is not an abstract principle. When you tell a
transgender child or teenager that their identity is in their heads — that it’s imaginative, it’s not
real — it has significant collateral consequences.”

On Wednesday, more than 500 student-athletes signed a letter that was sent to the N.C.A.A.,
pressing the organization’s leaders to stop holding championship events in states that restrict or
aim to restrict transgender athletes.

“You have been silent in the face of hateful legislation in states that are slated to host
championships, even though those states are close to passing anti-transgender legislation,” said
the letter, which was sent Wednesday and signed by 545 athletes from at least 80 universities.

The N.C.A.A., which moved championships away from North Carolina in 2016 when the state
was considering a bill to prevent some transgender people from using the restroom that matched
their gender identity, said in a statement in January that it would “closely monitor” such bills
related to sports participation. A spokeswoman for the organization reiterated that position in an
email on Wednesday without elaborating. The release of the letter was first reported by Sports
Illustrated.

Two women on the track and field team at Washington University in St. Louis — Aliya Schenck
and Alana Bojar — drafted the letter with help from two L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups.

“Queer athletes and trans athletes already have to deal with so much,” Schenck said in phone
interview on Wednesday. “And then to be put in a situation where they’re trying to enjoy maybe
the one thing that they can really just express themselves through — their sport — and just go to
practice and forget about everything else they’re dealing with, and suddenly that is also taken
away from them.”
The N.C.A.A. changed its process for selecting championship hosts in 2016, requiring a bidder
to “provide a statement certifying its ability to deliver and maintain an environment that is safe,
healthy and free of discrimination and respects the dignity of all persons.”

Under N.C.A.A. guidelines, transgender athletes are permitted to compete for college teams with
some restrictions.

Here is what we know about the many bills that have been introduced in legislative sessions this
year:

The bills generally contend that women’s sports are threatened.

Supporters of these bills often claim that women’s sports could someday be dominated by
transgender women because of the gains in strength typically conferred by male hormones
during puberty.

But there have been few transgender athletes at the elite levels of sport, according to the
American Civil Liberties Union.

“If the A.C.L.U. gets its way, women’s sports will no longer exist,” said Roger Brooks, senior
counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is challenging a law in Connecticut that
allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ teams. “There’ll be men’s sports and there’ll be
semi-coed sports, and women and girls in Connecticut will be losers.”

While there is minimal scientific research on transgender athletes, some evidence suggests that
transgender women may have muscle-mass advantages even after suppressing testosterone for a
year, if they went through puberty before starting hormone therapy.

As of Tuesday, 25 states have had bills introduced during this year’s legislative sessions,
according to the A.C.L.U.

“This is definitely the most extensive attack on trans youth and people I’ve ever seen,” Chase
Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the A.C.L.U., said Tuesday in a phone
interview.

Some of those bills did not go anywhere. But in addition to the measure in Mississippi, some
others will probably be signed into law. South Dakota also passed a bill, and the governor has
said she intends to sign it.

In Tennessee, Alabama and Montana, bills have passed one chamber and await a decision in the
other. In Arkansas and Missouri, lawmakers are considering bills and also constitutional
amendments that would put the issue to a statewide vote in 2022.

Beyond basic restrictions, most of those bills would also require any athlete whose gender was
questioned to undergo a physical or to provide certain medical information, such as the results of
hormone tests or evidence of operations, to certify ability to compete.
Federal legislation has also been introduced.

Representative Greg Steube of Florida, a Republican, in January introduced the Protection of

Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2021, which would designate sex as “based solely on a
person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” and make it illegal for operators of sports
programs that receive federal funds “to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an
athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.” A similar bill was introduced
in the Senate last month by Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican.

The bills were sent to committees for review. In previous sessions, bills with similar aims have
not advanced.

President Biden signed an executive order in January that prohibits discrimination based on
gender identity or sexual orientation, affirming a Supreme Court ruling from last year that said
workplaces could not fire people for being gay or transgender.

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to
the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” the order read.

Court cases are pending.

Last year, Idaho became the first state to pass a law preventing transgender women from
participating in women’s sports. A federal judge temporarily halted that ban in August, and it is
not being enforced while the case is pending.

Conversely, 16 states and the District of Columbia have laws that allow athletes in high school or
younger to compete on teams that match their gender identity, according to Chris Mosier, the
founder of Transathlete.com, which tracks policies related to transgender athletes in the United
States.

Connecticut, one of those 16 states, has been sued by three athletes who say that allowing
transgender girls to compete in women’s sports violates Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits
discrimination on the basis of sex in educational organizations that receive federal funding. Title
IX helped usher in many sports opportunities for women across the country.

Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States Department of Education said that
Connecticut’s high school policy violated Title IX. The Biden administration withdrew that
decision last month. The A.C.L.U. is urging that the suit be dropped, and a judge in Connecticut
is expected to rule in the coming weeks.

How many transgender athletes are there in the United States?

There is no service that tracks the number of transgender athletes nationally. Though it is
difficult to determine the number of transgender people in the U.S., a Gallup survey released last
month estimated that about 0.6 percent of the country’s adults identified as transgender.
Joanna Harper, a researcher based in Loughborough University in Britain, studies the effects of
hormone therapy on transgender athletes, and she estimated in an interview last summer that out
of 200,000 women in college sports at a given time, about 50 are transgender.

The Associated Press reported last week that it had contacted two dozen legislators who had
sponsored bills that would limit participation of transgender athletes on teams that match their
gender identity. Most of those lawmakers, the news agency said, “cannot cite a single instance in
their own state or region where such participation has caused problems.”

Readers’ comments

Zart
US

I don't understand why we have women's sports at all if not to recognize biological differences in
the sexes. My heart aches for transgender people caught in the middle here but if we don't
believe gender is biological the only logically consistent solution would be eliminating gendered
sports entirely.

Kathy Celer
Stevens Point, Wi.

So 1 in 4,000 women in college sports is transgender? This is a non-problem looking for a

Republican to exploit it. These are hateful and thoroughly unnecessary measures.

BillyBobby’s
NY

This is a tough issue. Of course a transgender person deserves absolutely every right to live as
the gender they identify with but we are really not talking about gender when discussing sports.
When discussing sports performance, it’s about body composition. As my teens like to chastise
me after they call me Boomer: gender is not sex, old man. You can’t eat your cake and have it
too. If gender is not sex, than gender should not be the category for the sport. Sporting
organizations can set body composition parameters and take gender out of the equation. There
will be some unfair results but overall, it’s probably the fairest solution.

shyegye
LA

Let it be, wait and see. If trans women start winning all--or even many--of the women's
competitions, a solid majority will want to deal with the problem. At this point we don't know if
there even is one.

Jeff
USA
There are legitimate reasons that states and other stakeholders are seeking to bar transgender
athletes from competing in women's events. Not least of which is that the entire purpose of
women's athletics is to allow women to compete against other persons of similar genetic traits,
i.e., not against men. To dismiss these proposed state laws as "hate" is intellectually dishonest on
the part of the students who signed the letter to the NCAA.