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U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, has refiled his Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act for the 119th Congress, a bill that would effectively ban transgender individuals’ participation in sports.
In an op-ed published in OutKick, a conservative sports outlet owned by Fox, Tuberville attacked the Biden administration’s attempts to protect trans individuals’ ability to participate in sports, claiming that Democrats are actually attacking Title IX.
“Sadly, over the last four years, the Biden administration has done all it can to dismantle Title IX protections for women in favor of radical gender ideology. President Biden’s Department of Education fully intended to rewrite Title IX, issuing a rule which would force schools to allow men to compete in women’s sports and require them to share private spaces together. All in the name of ‘gender equity.’ In the past few days, they rescinded this proposed rule, perhaps realizing how out of touch that stance is with the American public. But their intent was crystal clear,” Tuberville wrote.
Just after Biden assumed office in January 2021, he issued an executive order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.” The order included a section that read, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports” — which many interpreted as a protection of trans individuals’ right to participate in sports.
However, Biden ultimately backpedaled on the issue, with the administration clarifying that the Title IX ban on sex and gender identity-based discrimination in schools was not intended to apply to athletic eligibility. And just last month, Biden’s Department of Education announced that it would be completely withdrawing the proposal due to ongoing litigation over how Title IX should handle issues of gender identity. The president is abandoning a multitude of unfinished regulations, including the Title IX rework, in order to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from effectively coopting them and turning them into his own regulations on the same issues once he assumes office in a matter of weeks.
Regardless of this reality, Tuberville continued to lambast Biden, claiming that the president is still trying to protect transgender students’ participation in sports. According to the senator, such policy would not only be “a detriment to female student athletes, but to the entire country.”
“With President Trump’s resounding victory last November, the American people sent a clear message to Washington that they want to protect and preserve the original purpose of Title IX. One of the primary reasons President Trump won in a landslide is because he ran on the issue of saving women’s sports. Seventy percent of Americans agree: men don’t belong in women’s sports or locker rooms,” Tuberville continued.
Although framing the issue of transgender participation in sports as one of utmost importance would benefit Tuberville’s proposed legislation, data from the Pew Research Center shows that the issue was not even in the top ten for American voters in the 2024 presidential election. Even among Republicans, issues like the economy, foreign policy, crime, and immigration were all far more important at the ballot box.
“Furthermore, I am welcoming my first granddaughter this spring. I want for her what so many young women before her benefited from since Title IX became law in 1972. I want her to have the same opportunities available to her, without having to worry about men competing against her, harming her, or invading her privacy. I’m sure there are many parents and grandparents across the country that want the same for their girls,” Tuberville went on.
While Tuberville’s comments imply that allowing transgender students to participate in sports will put female students in harm’s way, multiple studies find that transgender individuals are actually far more likely to be the victims of sexual violence, rather than the perpetrators.
Lastly, Tuberville states that trans individuals’ participation in sports harms “the rights of American women and girls to fairly compete.” However, many advocates for women’s sports like Billie Jean King, Megan Rapinoe, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the National Women’s Law Center actually object to the type of legislation that Tuberville is proposing and support trans inclusion in women’s sports.
A study published in the National Library of Medicine also finds that, “while trans athletes competing in various sports and athletic events raises interesting considerations of how certain morphologic and physiologic factors affect performance, these questions are not exclusive to trans individuals. There are wide variations within cisgender populations, even when excluding individuals with differences in sexual development.”
“There is no concern for restricting individuals who are exceptionally large or small, those who are genetically gifted, or those with differing hormone concentrations or muscle mass, so long as their gender and biologic sex align,” the study concludes. “The disproportionate focus on the relatively small portion of the population who are trans seems based on the belief that cis men, who cannot succeed in sports among other cis men, would choose to misidentify as trans women to gain an advantage in sports against cis women. However, there are no legitimate cases of this occurring.”
Additionally, the study notes that gender affirming care, like hormone therapy, often reduces many of the sex differences between transgender athletes and their cisgender peers. Therefore, one method for improving “fairness” in sports would be to increase access to gender affirming care for transgender individuals. However, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act makes mention of no such policy action.
Previously, Tuberville’s bill failed on three separate occasions to pass through the Democrat-controlled Senate. However, the act could see new life following Trump’s inauguration, when the Republicans will control the presidency and both houses of Congress.
