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Original poster

Bill to ban trans athletes from women’s sports blocked in US Senate

81 replies

IwantToRetire · 04/03/2025 02:36

Legislation to prevent transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports failed to advance in the Senate on Monday after all Democrats voted against it.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act failed to clear an initial procedural hurdle on a 51-45 vote. It needed 60 votes to advance, which would have required at least seven Democrats to vote with all Republicans to move it. The bill cleared the House in January on an almost entirely party-line vote.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), sought to amend Title IX, the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination, to prohibit schools from allowing transgender students to compete in athletic events “designated for women or girls.” It defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

It would have effectively codified into law a Feb. 5 executive order signed by President Trump to ban transgender student-athletes from participating on girls’ and women’s sports teams. ...

Article continues at https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/5174190-transgender-athletes-bill-fails/

OP posts:
Floisme · 04/03/2025 08:14

And maybe the third reason is that they hate Trump more than they support women and girls?

SionnachRuadh · 04/03/2025 08:06

Tommy Tuberville has been pushing this for years. He's not an uncontroversial senator and you may disagree with everything else he says. Put that aside. Before politics, he was a legendary college football coach, so on sports he knows exactly what he's talking about.

Significant that there was even a procedural vote. Coach Tuberville told Megyn Kelly a few months ago that Senate GOP leadership wouldn't bring this to the floor because they were certain they didn't have the 60 votes needed to proceed. If that was true, the whole point of bringing it to the floor was to get the Dems on record defending a really unpopular position.

I assume the Dems have two reasons for being intransigent. One is ID politics and the other is that Democrat senators get massive donations from Big Pharma.

Floisme · 04/03/2025 08:05

I believe the bill was called the 'Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act'

I've been following Kara Dansky and the Democratic Women's Declaration who worked hard to try and persuade Democrats in the Senate to support it. They never talked about the wording being problematic.

RatedDoingMagic · 04/03/2025 07:59

Is it a really badly worded Bill, or is the reporting about it just ignorant? I am very much GC but I wouldn't vote for a Bill that treated "Transgender students" as a single category, does the Bill not actually say that the people banned from female sports are the male people? Because there's lots of transgender female people who should obviously be fully able to participate in the female sports category if they aren't taking testosterone.

Floisme · 04/03/2025 07:57

I'm not up to speed with US politics but I've been following this and, from where I'm sitting, it looked like it could have been a real opportunity for the Democrats to show the world they'd learned something from their election defeat.

That article says that ' 79 percent of Americans believe trans athletes should not be allowed to participate in women’s athletics.' I've read (though can't find the source right now) that 69% of Democrat voters agree. It's their politicians who appear to be out of step.

Can any US voters explain it? Are there any signs of the Democrats coming to their senses or are they stuck forever in double down mode?

OvaHere · 04/03/2025 07:47

The Dems one job during this Trump term was to show that they can walk back the worst of their batshittery and be in better shape for 2028.

Apparently they've not got that memo.