Two more states are trying to restrict transgender participation in school athletics, after a slew of stories about actual men taking part in and dominating women’s sporting events in the guise of biological females.
Tennessee’s HB 1572 would require “elementary and secondary schools that receive public funding to ensure that student athletes participate in school-sanctioned sports based on the student’s biological sex as indicated by the athlete’s original birth certificate issued at birth.”
The bill does not allow for revised or amended birth certificates. This would make biological sex and not “gender identity,” or the gender that a person feels he is, the only basis for which teams an athlete could play on.
If the bill becomes law, schools that don’t comply would be “immediately ineligible to continue receiving state and local public funds.” Funding would only resume “if the department of education and a court of competent jurisdiction find that the school is in compliance” with the new law.
The Tennessee legislation would affect all trans student athletes, but a proposed bill in Washington State targets trans women and girls – that is to say, males pretending to be female – specifically. State Rep. Brad Klippert is introducing House Bill 2201, KEPR-TV reports. The bill bars students who are male at birth from competing “with and against female students in athletic activities.”
The proposed law applies only to sports with separate classifications for male and female students, and only to sports restricted to female competitors. They must also be individual competition sports like golf, swimming or track and field, according to KEPR-TV.
“It’s been brought to my attention on multiple occasions by constituents, athletes who’s first gender was male are competing against females and dominating sports,” Klipperts aid.
Several other states have taken similar action in 2019. The Freedom for All Americans website has a legislation tracker for those measures.
