Texas House OKs bill to limit on transgender college athletes participation in sports

The Texas House with a 95-50 vote Thursday gave its final approval to a bill that would require public college athletes to compete on teams that align with their sex assigned at birth.

Senate Bill 15, which supporters have dubbed the "Save Women’s Sports Act," would prohibit transgender college athletes from competing in sports against those who match their gender identity. Under the proposal, transgender women would have to play on men’s collegiate sports teams and transgender men would have to play on women’s sports teams.

Rep. Valoree Swanson, R- Spring, said Wednesday that transgender women competing in women's sports creates an "unsafe and dangerous playing environment" for cisgender women. Several other Republican House members who supported the bill, all wearing pink, joined her at the microphone as she laid out the bill.

SB 15 "will codify necessary protections for our college female athletes to ensure their safety, promote fair competition and uphold the monumental progress of women's athletics that has occurred since the passage of Title IX just over 50 years ago because our young women deserve to compete on a level playing field," Swanson said.

While supporters of the bill say it promotes fairness in sports and protects cisgender female athletes, transgender Texans and other opponents of the bill have argued that the proposal discriminates against a very small group of people who already face challenges with feeling included.

The Senate in March approved SB 15, filed by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, with a 19-10 vote. The proposal is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priorities this legislative session, and Gov. Greg Abbott has indicated he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk.

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SB 15 would create an avenue for "injunctive relief" against public higher education institutions and college sports teams in Texas that violate the law and would prohibit universities from retaliating against anyone for reporting violations. It also would allow women to compete against men in sports if a corresponding women’s team is not offered or available.

During debate Wednesday, House Democrats offered several amendments to the bill, including ones that would allow transgender men to compete in men's college sports or to void the bill entirely, but all those proposed changes were rejected.

The bill now returns to the Senate for final approval on the lower chamber's minor changes. If the Senate does not approve the House revisions, the bill would be referred to a conference committee that would hash out the differences before a final version is returned to both chambers for a final OK.

According to a limited list by Outsports, 36 openly transgender athletes nationwide have competed in college sports, including at community colleges and junior colleges, in the past decade. The list does not include any athletes who competed or are competing while attending a university in Texas.

The American-Statesman previously asked every four-year public university in Texas that participates in NCAA-sanctioned sports if they ever had a transgender athlete compete, and none said yes. Several schools did not respond to the Statesman's requests.

Referencing the Statesman's reporting, Rep. John Bucy III, D-Austin, said the bill was a “solution in search of a problem” and “unworthy of serious consideration” by the House. He said there was “no epidemic” of transgender athletes dominating women’s sports and the bill does nothing to “save women’s sports.”

“We must ask ourselves, ‘Who are we saving and what exactly is it that we are saving them from?’” Bucy said. “There is no research or evidence to suggest that this issue is affecting access and opportunity for Texas women. With Senate Bill 15, we’re not saving women’s sports from anything.”

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Republican lawmakers have referenced transgender college athletes who have successfully competed in sports while enrolled at universities in other states, including Cece Telfer and Lia Thomas, as a reason to pass the bill, arguing that the Legislature needs to approve the proposal as a preventative measure in Texas.

Telfer, a transgender female athlete at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, won the 400-meter hurdle race during a competition at Texas A&M University-Kingsville in 2019. She competed in NCAA Division II and was the first openly transgender person to win an NCAA title.

Thomas, a transgender woman from Austin, competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team and won the NCAA Division I national championship in the women's 500-yard freestyle event in March 2022.

Lawmakers have filed several bills this session targeting transgender Texans and LGBTQ+ issues, including a proposal to prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming care to minors experiencing gender dysphoria, which the Legislature on Wednesday advanced to the governor's office to become law.

This session's proposal to enact limits on transgender public college athletes also comes two years after the Legislature passed a similar bill that bans transgender student athletes in public K-12 schools from competing on a team that aligns with their gender identity.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Legislature: House OKs transgender college athlete restrictions