By: Shauneen Miranda – January 14, 2025
WASHINGTON — A measure that would bar transgender students from participating on women’s school sports teams consistent with their gender identity passed the U.S. House on Tuesday.
The legislation — which advanced 218-206 — came as an increasing number of states have passed laws banning trans athletes from participating in sports in K-12 schools and colleges that align with their gender identity and amid a wider GOP-led push to enact anti-trans legislation.
President-elect Donald Trump, set to be sworn in Jan. 20, repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail that he would ban transgender youth from participating in school sports that align with their gender identity.
Almost all U.S. House Democrats opposed the measure, but two Texans — U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — voted for it. North Carolina Democratic Rep. Don Davis voted “present.”
Florida GOP Rep. Greg Steube introduced the legislation, a version of which passed the House in the previous session of Congress but had no chance of success back when Democrats controlled the Senate.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said “this is a great day for women in America” during a press conference following the vote.
The Louisiana Republican said the “House voted to uphold common sense again.”
Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer at the University of Kentucky who was at the press conference, said that with the House’s passage, “we are one step closer as a nation to making sure that not one more male athlete is able to take a trophy, a roster spot, playing time, resources or an opportunity to compete, from a woman.”
Gaines is a leading voice in opposing transgender athletes’ participation in sports that align with their gender identity.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted that there has been “considerable disinformation and misinformation about what the inclusion of transgender youth in sports entails” and that trans students’ sports participation “has been a non-issue.”
What the bill would do
EditSign Title IX so that “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
The bill does not specify how exactly the ban would be enforced — a point House Democrats in opposition to the measure were quick to point out.
Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law that bars schools that receive federal funding from practicing sex-based discrimination.
In April 2024, the Biden administration released updated regulations to Title IX, part of which sought to bolster federal protections for LGBTQ+ students.
But last week, a federal judge in Kentucky scrapped the administration’s final rule nationwide — ending enforcement of the updated regulations that had drawn strong GOP opposition and a slew of legal challenges and created a policy patchwork across the country.
With Republicans now leading both chambers of Congress and Trump’s imminent return to the White House, the GOP stands in a more robust position to enact such a ban.
Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville reintroduced a similar measure in the U.S. Senate last week. That effort, which already has the support of 35 Senate Republicans, would likely need the backing of at least 60 senators to advance past the filibuster.
There are 45 Democratic senators in Congress, though independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont caucus with the Democrats.
The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment Tuesday on the House bill.
Democrats, civil rights groups object
The measure drew strong opposition from House Democrats, who spoke during the floor debate in front of a backdrop that read: “The GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act.”
The bill is titled by Republicans as the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025.”
U.S. Rep Suzanne Bonamici, part of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce, fiercely opposed the measure, which she said would “empower child predators — putting students across the country at increased risk.”
Bonamici voiced concerns over privacy violations and harassment regarding how the bill would be enforced.
“This is a ‘one size fits all’ bill that would apply equally to every sport, from K-12 schools to colleges,” the Oregon Democrat said during floor debate.
Meanwhile, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, along with more than 400 civil rights groups, called on members of Congress to reject the measure Monday, writing in a letter that “this discriminatory proposal seeks to exclude transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people from athletics programs in schools.”
“Instead of providing for equal facilities, equipment, and travel, or any other strategy that women athletes have been pushing for for decades, the bill cynically veils an attack on transgender people as a question of athletics policy,” the groups wrote.
