The bill to prevent trans athletes from women’s sports is a top priority in the new House Rules package
119 US Congress has indicated that taking legislative action to ban trans athletes from women’s and women’s sports will be a top priority this month.
House rules package for the 119th Congress was announced this week, and the first step in its order is a bill that would lead to revisions to Title IX that would only allow athletes to compete in the gender category they were assigned at birth.
“A bill to amend the Education Amendment of 1972 to provide that for purposes of determining compliance with title IX of such Act in athletics, sex shall be recognized solely on the basis of the reproductive biology and genetics of the individual at birth,” first item in final section of the package reads.
The package states that the bill will be the first of 12 bills to be considered separately, with a one-hour debate.
Republicans regained control of the White House and Senate while retaining the House of Representatives in November’s elections after a heated campaign season in which trans inclusion in women’s sports became a key issue.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to impose a blanket ban on trans athletes in women’s sports with near-unanimous support from Republican allies.
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Currently, 25 states in the US have laws that restrict or prevent trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. But the other 25 states have no such laws, and many, like California, even have laws that specifically allow trans athletes to compete against women or girls.
But even states that have laws barring trans athletes from women’s sports have had their laws overruled by federal judges this year. Judges Landya McCafferty of New Hampshire and M. Hannah Lauck of Virginia issued rulings in 2024 that allowed biological males to play on high school girls’ soccer and tennis teams. Both judges were appointed by former President Obama in the early 2010s.
Meanwhile, Democrats have backed multiple bills that would allow for transgender inclusion in women’s sports nationally, including the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights.
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It was an issue that has drawn fierce criticism against Democrats and the Biden administration since the day President Biden took office in January 2021.
On the first day in office, he betrayed executive order on “Prevention and suppression of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation”. The order included a section that read: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about being denied access to the bathroom, locker room or school sports.”
The administration then issued a sweeping rule in April that clarified that Title IX’s ban on “sex” discrimination in schools covers discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and “pregnancy or related conditions.” The administration has insisted that the regulation does not deal with athletic eligibility. However, more experts presented evidence to Fox News Digital in June that it will ultimately put more biological males into women’s sports.
Several states have filed lawsuits and enacted their own laws to address the issue, and then Supreme Court then voted 5-4 in August to reject an emergency request by the Biden administration to implement its sweeping changes in those states.
The issue proved to be one of the key campaign vulnerabilities for Vice President Harris and Democrats across the country in the last election.
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AND national exit poll by the legislative action committee Concerned Women for America found that 70% of moderate voters saw the issue of “Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing women’s and women’s sports and transgender boys and men using women’s and women’s bathrooms” as important for them.
And 6% said it was the most important issue of all, while 44% said it was “very important.”
More Democrats have since withdrawn their support. Biden’s Department of Education dropped a proposed rule change that would have penalized schools to prevent trans athletes from competing in women’s sports in December. The rule was proposed in April 2023, but is now just a failed endeavor as Biden prepares to leave office.
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