House bill would allow girls', women's sports teams to exclude transgender athletes

Each political party views the issues of the day through a partisan lens, which is shaped by their divergent ideologies.

The stark difference was again on full display Thursday when the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee approved a bill specifying that organizations fielding sports teams for women and girls can limit participation in those teams to only athletes born as females.

In effect, HF1233 would carve out an exemption to the Minnesota Human Rights Act, allowing discrimination against transgender girls and women on sports teams.

Rep. Natalie Zeleznikar (R-Fredenberg Township), the bill sponsor, said it would strengthen Title IX protections for girls and women playing sports and protect them from the greater risk of injuries from playing alongside or against opponents born as males.

DFL members characterized the legislation as demeaning to transgender people, saying it would deny them athletic opportunities, harm their mental health, and open them up to bullying.

Approved, as amended, on a 7-6 party-line vote, the bill was sent to the House floor.

It is the second Republican attempt this week to limit who can play on sports teams.

On Monday, the House failed to pass the “Preserving Girls’ Sports Act” that states: “only female students may participate in an elementary or secondary school level athletic team or sport that an educational institution has restricted to women and girls.”

“Girls across the state deserve a fair and level playing field with the protections designed in Title IX,” Zeleznikar said, referring to the 1972 federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.

She cited examples of transgender women still having a competitive edge, on average, in speed, strength, endurance, and other physical factors over biological females.

The bill, she said, was born out of a desire to ensure the athletic achievements of girls and women are not unfairly diminished by competing against athletes born as males.

Examples of entities that could ban transgender athletes from girls and women’s teams include: postsecondary state colleges and universities, nonpublic schools, religious organizations or denominational educational institutions, or youth sports organizations.

The bill defines a female as “an individual who naturally has, had, will have, or would have, but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.”

Rep. Brion Curran (DFL-White Bear Lake) said that definition does not recognize individuals who are born as intersex, who are two-spirit, or who otherwise don’t fall into biologically distinct male or female categories.

Curran said that it’s telling that the bill doesn’t specify which sports teams these people should be allowed to play on. “(It unjustly) carves out a group of people from public life. Trans people are not a problem to be fixed.”