House passes bill to ban transgender student-athletes from women’s sports

The House passed legislation Tuesday banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports in schools and institutions receiving federal funds.

The bill, which would also change federal law to say that “sex must be recognized solely on the basis of a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” was approved largely along the lines partisan by 218 votes to 206.

Only two Texas Democrats voted for the measure: Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., voted present and no Republicans opposed the measure.

The bill now heads to the Senate.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., who sponsored the legislation, said it was intended to protect women’s sports.

“The distinction between men and women is clear and obvious, and the erasure of this division has been promulgated by those on the radical left who seek to dismantle the fundamental foundations of our society,” Steube told the House before the vote. “We must never let our country and the American way of life succumb to this immoral ideology.”

Rep. Lori Trahan, a Mass. Democrat and the only woman in Congress to play Division I college sports, said Republicans were using the measure to “inject themselves into decisions they don’t have to make.” “.

“I have long placed my trust in sports governing bodies – the experts who have dedicated their lives to these games – to create fair and responsible rules for participation,” Trahan said during his speech.

Trahan and other Democrats have called the bill the “Child Predator Empowerment Act,” arguing that it endangers the safety of children in schools and could expose them to questioning and inspection by their body.

The bill passed the House in the last Congress in April 2023 without Democratic support and did not advance in the Senate, which at the time was controlled by Democrats. The Republicans now hold the majority.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who last week upheld a ban barring transgender people from using single-sex restrooms that match their gender identity near the House floor, said Tuesday that the Republicans “once again defended women.”

“I’m a Bible-believing Christian, I make no apologies for that. But whether you consider that to be truth or not, it’s also nature. It’s biology,” he said during of a press conference after the vote.