More than 400 civil rights organizations are urging congressional lawmakers to vote against legislation that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, along with 405 other civil rights organizations supporting LGBTQ issues, sent a letter Monday to lawmakers asking them to reject the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The Leadership Conference in a news release called the legislation "the latest in a spate of harmful bills at the national and local levels that are an attack on transgender, nonbinary, and intersex students."
The House last year passed the bill, sponsored by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., by a 219-203 vote, with no Democrat support, but it languished in the Democrat-controlled Senate. House Republicans proposed Steube's bill as part of the rules package for the 119th Congress. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate.
The legislation counters the Biden administration's expansion of Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. That expansion was struck down by a federal court last week, as well as in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges. The new legislation states that a person's sex shall be recognized based solely on their reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
"This discriminatory proposal seeks to exclude transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people from athletics programs in schools," the letter stated. "Although the authors of the legislation represent themselves as serving the interests of cisgender girls and women, this legislation does not address the longstanding barriers all girls and women have faced in their pursuit of athletics.
"Instead of providing for equal facilities, equipment, and travel, or any other strategy that women athletes have been pushing for decades, the bill cynically veils an attack on transgender people as a question of athletics policy."
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on barring transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.
The House is expected to consider Steube's bill Tuesday, The Hill reported. Last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., took procedural steps to place the measure on the Senate calendar without having to go through a committee, with a vote in the coming weeks.
The legislation has the backing of 97 Republicans in the House and Senate, who argue such legislation is needed to maintain a level playing field in women's sports and protect female athletes from injury, according to The Hill.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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