US House Passes The Protection of Women and Girls Act

On Thursday, April 20, 2023 the US House of Representatives passed H.R 734, The Protection of Women and Girls Act, on strict party lines. This bill rewrites Title IX to require that athletes participate in the sport that matches their biological sex, proven through their reproductive sex organs.

Not a single Democrat voted in favor of the bill and during the House floor debate the day before they spoke in strong opposition. Democrats cited the suicide rate of trans kids and Republicans talked about Lia Thomas, an NCAA swimmer who transitioned in 2021 and competed on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team from 2021-2022. Lia Thomas broke records at the NCAA championship and has been the target of controversy from anti-trans legislators. 

According to The Philly Voice, Thomas broke the record held by Miki Dahlke, a Harvard alum who, along with over 300 NCAA swimmers, signed a letter supporting Thomas’ participation in women’s sports. According to California Representative Mark Takano, who spoke as a witness against the bill during the committee hearing, this bill would do nothing to deal with Lia Thomas’ participation in elite competition. It specifically deals with athletes on sports teams but not competition. Takano stated during the floor debate that this debate had been “traumatizing.” He compared it to a California bill, The Briggs Initiative in 1977, that would have banned gay and lesbian people from working in public schools. Takano stated that a Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, vetoed the bill.

A similar bill was vetoed in Utah by Republican Governor Cox. He stated in a letter condemning the bill, “I am not an expert on transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.” Cox alluded to the numbers of athletes in Utah, that out of 75,000 athletes, four kids in sports are trans, one was a trans girl. He also acknowledged the high rate of suicide attempts, 56%, and contemplation of suicide, 86%, among trans youth. Cox closed his letter saying, “I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking 467 anti-trans bills across the country. The bills range from sports bans, to bans on gender affirming care, to states like Texas and Florida removing trans kids from their families.

Groups opposed to H.R 734 include the National Education Association, the Human Rights Campaign, and multiple women’s and girl’s rights organizations. These organizations call this bill discriminatory and that it erases the identity of intersex, trans and non-binary people. “H.R. 734 unmistakably constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. As recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, numerous Federal courts, and the U.S. Department of Education, sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity and sex characteristics.”

The bill sponsor, Florida Representative Greg Stuebe, stated during the house floor debate, “For thousands of years as a species we recognized that there are men and women. Yet over the last several years there has been a perversion of gender by the enemy. The Left has completely embraced the lie to erase the lines of gender. The left has created made-up terms that didn’t exist just a few short years ago, like non-binary, cisgender, trans-male, trans-female.” He went on to say that he has three dictionaries in his house and that none of them have the word trans in them. He said that “transphobic is a leftist idiom.” He also said that if you look up transgender on Webster it states that the terms “trans male” and “trans woman” were invented in 1996. 

Advocates for trans exclusionary bills often state that we don’t understand the science and that this is a new phenomenon, but history and cultural understanding proves that trans people have existed throughout history. According to National Geographic, the term transgender was first used in the 1960s, “but people have always challenged the gender binary.” One of the first people to receive gender confirming surgery was Dora Richter, born in Germany in 1891.

The language of the bill is short and concise, stating, “To amend the Education Amendments of 1972 to provide that for purposes of determining compliance with title IX of such Act in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. It shall be a violation of subsection (a) for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.” Governor Cox brought these issues up in his letter, that because of the wording of the Utah bill, schools would be under constant threat of lawsuits and financial scrutiny. Girls and women’s sports are already underfunded, even at the elite level. University of Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince highlighted these discrepancies in a viral video.

This bill would essentially put federal funding at risk for girls sports programs based on the reproductive sex organs of its athletes. Before Governor Cox vetoed the outright ban of trans kids in sports Utah had a sports ban. In 2022 a girl was secretly investigated after she won a sports competition, the losing girl’s parents complained to the school and accused the girl of being trans. The school investigated, in secret, going back through medical records of the winner all the way through kindergarten, to discover in fact that she is cisgender, (her gender identity matches her sex assigned at birth.)

President Biden has already announced that even if the bill makes it through the Senate, he will veto it because he believes it is a discriminatory bill. Trans people, and children specifically, are facing an onslaught of attacks. Several states, including Oregon, are trying to pass bills that protect trans people. HB 2002 out of Oregon expands health care to cover gender affirming care. HB 2002 is still working its way through committees.

The Torch has reached out to LCC’s Title IX coordinator and the LCC Gender Equity Center for comment.