Photo by Thiago Rocha on Unsplash
Along with over 400 other human rights organizations, the Feminist Majority Foundation has signed on to a letter written by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to oppose H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. This House bill would alter Title IX to block transgender women and girls from participating in federally funded women’s sports programs. In the aftermath of the recent Tennessee v. Cardona case, where a federal district judge ruled that Title IX protections cannot be expanded to include gender identity, the letter from the Leadership Conference represents an important coalition of support for transgender students.
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 was introduced on January 3, 2025 by Rep. Gregory Steube (R-FL-17), and passed on January 14, 2025. The New York Times reports that it mirrors the 2023 bill by the same name, which passed the House but not the Senate, and was immediately condemned by the ACLU. The 2023 version would have resolved that federally funded education programs and activities cannot “operate, sponsor, or facilitate athletic programs” that allow individuals “of the male sex” to participate in programs for women or girls. In this bill, “sex” is based on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
The coalition letter outlines multiple issues with H.B. 28, including its discriminatory impact on transgender youth, the lack of attention to athletics barriers that women and girls face, and the danger it poses to the civil rights of all students. This bill invalidates trans identities by referring to trans women and girls as “of the male sex.” Furthermore, it is exclusive, invasive, and single-sided. In a recent press release, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center Fatima Goss Graves stated that “it only makes it more likely that women and girls will be targeted and punished based on someone else’s idea of what a woman or girl should look or act like.”
The bill’s provisions focus on banning individuals “of the male sex” from participating in programs for women or girls, and states that it will determine sex based on “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” However, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14) pointed out, there is no enforcement mechanism, meaning that it is unclear who will investigate athletes’ genetics and what measures they will use to do so. A notable gray area regards intersex people, who may have chromosomes that vary from the commonly regarded, stereotypical XX (female) and XY (male), while also possessing combinations of reproductive organs that differ from the stereotypical sets.
Given this consideration, H.B. 28 even has the potential to target cisgender women and girls, especially women and girls of color. Eurocentric ideals of womanhood have historically, and presently, been used to challenge the success of cisgender female athletes, with contemporary examples including Olympic athletes such as runner Caster Semenya, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting. Perceptions of womanhood that are based on “biology,” such as beliefs surrounding appropriate hormone levels, are also inherently based on whiteness.
Finally, H.B. 28 directs the Government Accountability Office to compile one-sided data on the harms that transgender women and girls’ participation in sports causes to their cisgender counterparts, including the benefits that they will lose and any psychological, developmental, participatory, and sociological negative impacts. Creating this body of data is dangerous, as it intentionally omits and ignores the neutral or positive of trans participation in sports. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that an inclusive athletics policy in Connecticut did not detract from cisgender girls’ participation, while the Center for Disease Control’s program, “What Works in Schools,” implied that including transgender people in sports may be beneficial because it reduces experiences of violence, poor mental health, and suicidal thoughts among high school students regardless of sexual identity.
H.B. 28 will now move to the Senate, where it would require seven Democrats to vote with Republicans in order to move past a filibuster.
