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

[IwantToRetire]

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/

I think the point here is that while Executive Orders have to be followed, they can simply be replaced with another Executive Order saying the opposite when the other side gets in power. If you turn them into a law, then there's a long and complicated process to go through to get the law thrown out.

So, why are some Executive Orders turned into laws and some not? It's because it can be a complicated process, as last night's vote showed, and it would consume too much time and effort for them all to be turned into law. In the case of this particular law, I think part of the calculation to choose it for "convsersion" was that either it would go through straightforwardly or, if the Democrats sabotaged it, that would provide great PR to the Republicans who could then present it as the Democrats still being "for they/them and not for you" after their defeat involving this very point, and that they weren't interested in protecting women's rights in general, only ones they favoured.

The Republicans didn't bring this to the Senate earlier when they might have done. It has been noticed that the Democrats sabotaged the bill on the first day of business in the Senate of Women's History Month, which is interesting symbolism.

@MarieDeGournay clarifying this would be a matter for the debate when the Bill is being discussed, but it seems to be as @CapabilityBrownsHaHa describes, or if a male identifying as female but with no intention of being on the school sports team or any sports capability or ambition at all can be allowed to do Netball with the girls rather than Football with the boys during the compulsory PE slot, so long as the safety and dignity of the girls isn't being compromised. The male in question should certainly have a curriculum which includes active exercise and shouldn't be expected to just not have any PE lessons. It is reasonable for the legislation to differentiate between a programme of activity that is for all children to promote their health and fitness, which is usually divided into boys and girls post-puberty, where it might in some cases not do any harm for the weedy kid who would be utterly pulverised on the football field to be utterly pulverised on the netball court instead, vs a programme of Elite/Competitve sporting achievement where it is absolutely unfair for any male to take any opportunity that is designated for females.

I didn't say only Democrats get pharma lobby funding. I said Democrats get lots of pharma lobby funding. Which they do.

There's also a non-trivial chance that JB Pritzker gets to be their next presidential candidate.

I've no problem with mixed activities which would include the male 'weedy kid' and anybody else. The legislation is not about PE for all schoolchildren, it is specifically about not allowing

a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.

A 'person whose sex is male' should not be allowed to join in with girls just because he's weedy - if it's the girls' team, it's the girls' team, full stop.

Sorry, male 'weedy kid', your female classmates are not your support animals. And if you 'a male identifying as female but with no intention of being on the school sports team or any sports capability or ambition at all,' I think the girls are better off without you, if you're that un-motivated about sport you're not bringing much to the group, are you?

What message is his presence giving to the keen young sportswomen striving to do their best and be the best, when weedy kid is just here because he's too weedy for the guys' team but the girls' team? that'll do nicely.

The suggestion that it's OK as long as it's not elite level is like the ECB abandoning girls in grassroots cricket by only applying the single-sex rule at higher levels, as if grassroots sports are not where the elite women athletes and sportswomen come from.

There's mixed sports which are designated as such, which weedy kid is welcome to join in, and there's women's and girls' sports, which he isn't.

There are lots of puny boys and they don't normally get to play with the girls. And the idea that trans girls are weakened to the point of being unable to compete with boys is simply tra propaganda. These boys retain plenty of male advantage. Lia Thomas is a better example than some theoretical weakened, puny boy.

I woukld also interpret section 4 as permitting males to train/practice with the agreement of the girls/women.

It is quite common for elite or potentially elite women and girls to play against males in order to improve their game, especially in sports like tennis and cricket. Banning all such participation would not be helpful.

I understand your concern, MariedeGournay, but this is how I read it as well. It doesn't simply mean M2F boys - it's any boys, playing with the girls as boys. A lot more boys play sport than girls do. Sometimes you need a boy or two to make up the numbers in an 11-a-side football game - perhaps playing one half for one side and the other half for the opposing side, or one boy on each team. A spare boy drafted into the girls' rowing 8 so that all 7 girls who have turned up can get out on the water. I think they would be playing as boys, is the point.

Edited for clarity.

Section 4 is also limited to training and practising, so presumably not playing competitively.

The thing is, many girls will self exclude if boys of any type are included. It annoys me when some girls say they are happy to have boys in their teams, because they are simply ring fencing women's sport for girls like them, the best, most competitive, able to compete with and against boys. This leaves other girls out in the cold, not to mention girls from certain religious/cultural backgrounds. Is anyone able to object when the coach brings in a boy to make up the numbers? How easy to do that instead of recruiting and developing a few more girls!

We can thank the Democrats for what is now going on in Ukraine. How can they not see that letting males into females competitions massively disadvantages and endangers female people? God, their thick.

If girls are thought to be self-excluding, then you exclude boys. In other situations, you need some flexibility because it actually is very hard to recruit girls into sports teams, especially after puberty starts. They drop out in droves. It would be a bit rough on the keen girls who do carry on and want to play in situations when you need a minimum number or an even number of participants for the training game/session to go ahead.
And just to hammer home the point - they would be participating as boys.

Thanks for the sharelink. Annoyingly, some news sites still ask people to create an account to read legitimately shared articles - it’s v cheeky of them.

I didn’t realise, and yes very cheeky.

Ive been an on and off subscriber to them for years, as I used to do a lot of work for an American company and spent time out there. I bagged a special offer of a subscription for $1 per month - I don’t read it as often as I did but it’s good as part a varied diet of news media. However, it’s not the institution it was when Woodward and Bernstein worked for them.

Kara Dansky on Substack:
'we thought there was a remote possibility we might get one or two yes votes from Senate Dems, which would at least have shifted the national conversation. But nope.'

I wonder who those one or two Senate Dems are?

https://karadansky.substack.com/p/so-much-for-s9

Does this mean that Trumps EO will now be ignored?

I'm so sick of it all now.

GB News and other right-wing outlets are still going on about 'gender transitions' in schools. A lot of people are saying they didn't vote Democrat, or even voted Republican, because of genderism. Gender ideology, being so ridiculous, so aggressively enforced, and so weakly caved into by the establishment and corporate culture, was the perfect weapon for the right and continues to be so.

I'd like to ask the genderist side to back off. We've got bigger problems now, and part of the reason this all came about is the backlash against gender ideology. By all means, we need to show tolerance and kindness towards that tiny minority of people who suffer from sexual dysphoria. But don't push an ideology where everyone has a 'gender identity' and it's that identity that counts, not biological reality. Don't mob feminist meetings, insist on males in women's sports, or teach little kids they might be in the wrong body. We've seen where that leads to.

Two thirds of Democrat voters know that genderism is barking mad rubbish, but still the party think that they know best. They must want to lose again. If Trump doesn't suspend elections next time.

I'm not in the US but my understanding is no but an Executive Order is always vulnerable to being overturned by a future president, whereas this would have fixed it in law. Hopefully a US poster can clarify that.

Here's a good video that sums it up.

But my point is that sport just keeps ring fencing itself for the tough, able girls. There is no need to try very hard to get a wider range of girls interested. Just add in a few boys. I see how that is solving an immediate problem but it isn't solving the bigger problem. And it's not a good enough reason to continue to allow trans identifying males access to women's sport.

This has come up on a number of threads re US political system which most of us UK posters dont really understand.

But (and am happy to be corrrected) there are 3 powers each of which can challenge the power of the other 2.

The President, Congress, the Courts

ie any executive order could be challenged by each of the others, and many of Trump's EO are now subject to legal challenges

and as the article I quoted in the OP said "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. ... " so just on that procedural process of not supporting a Trump EO the Democrats would oppose.

But also shows (which is constantly repeated on other threads) that previous Presidents EO have not been challenged, presumably because neither Congress or Court cases objected to them.

What I am not clear is whether Trump's EO has to be followed by say publicly funded organisations. And even if they did they can now say Congress didn't approve, and in the end they decide on public money. https://theconversation.com/congress-not-the-president-decides-on-government-spending-a-constitutional-law-professor-explains-how-the-power-of-the-purse-works-248644

By my understanding (Murican friends will know baroque Senate procedure better) you need a filibuster proof 60 votes in the Senate to vote for cloture, which will advance the bill for a full vote. That's not 60 votes to pass the bill, it's a hurdle where 60 senators have to agree to take it to a substantive vote where a simple majority could pass it.

That means you need 7 Democrats to break ranks and say, let's put this to the vote. Obviously, and Tuberville has said this repeatedly, there aren't seven Democrats who are sensible and/or brave enough to do so.

The thing is, the Democrat caucus is holding very firm on this. Once you get past John Fetterman, I struggle to think of any mavericks in the caucus. There are three ways it's getting to 60 votes: if the GOP make significant gains in the midterms (it's a difficult map for Democrats but there aren't that many competitive seats) or if some of the senior Democrats say "Fuck it, I'm 80 and I'm not running again, I don't have to suck up to the Pritzkers any more."

Neither seems very likely right now. So it's a matter of whether Senate Democrats can read polls and see that their activist/lobbyist guys are out of touch with Democrat voters.

If you're trying to get novices interested, or doing it for fun, strictly girls only. Coaches already know this. You can involve boys in training if there is a benefit to the girls (and reciprocal benefit to boys), If not, not. That's basically what the clause is saying. If it's not to the girls' benefit, then it's unlawful.

There are so many different situations and a total ban might result in fewer girls having access to their favoured sport.

A similar bill also failed in Minnesota, unfortunately.

https://www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily/Story/18545

One of the representatives who voted against the bill decided to up her level of rhetoric to unhinged, calling it "state-sanctioned genocide".

That's the same Minnesota whose governor Tim Walz declared it a sanctuary state for trans-identifying kids whose parents are unwilling to affirm their new identities.

Very much on brand for a state that wants to prove that, even in the Midwest, you can have California style insanity.