U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Ban Transgender Participation in Women’s Sports
For the second time, the United States House of Representatives has passed a bill banning all transgender women from women’s and girls’ sports that receive federal funding and come under Title IX jurisdiction.
The bill states its purpose in the introduction: “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.”
Passage of this bill into law would thus prevent any person assigned male at birth from competing in a women’s athletic program, even after undergoing hormone-replacement therapy for an extended period of time.
The bill covers any sporting competition under federal jurisdiction, but it does not prevent males from practicing “with an athletic program or that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.”
The bill was passed upon mostly party lines, with 218 representatives voting in favor and 206 against. Two Democrats joined every Republican in the chamber in voting for the bill. This legislation previously passed the House in 2023 but did not advance in the U.S. Senate, then under Democratic control. The Republicans now own a majority of the Senate, but the bill would require Democratic support to reach the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster and pass the legislation, so its future is unclear.
Read more from CNN here, and the full text of the bill is available here.