A new piece of legislation introduced in Virginia would require students who identify as transgender to compete on sports teams that align with their biological sex instead of their gender identity.
The bill, H.B. 1387, was introduced Thursday by Republican lawmaker Del. Karen Greenhalgh. The bill stipulates that schools and universities must categorize sports teams “based on biological sex” as teams for female students, teams for male students, or coed teams that include both.
According to The Washington Post, the bill would prohibit public schools from competing against private schools unless the private schools comply with the legislation.
This year, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration published guidance stating that school districts should require transgender students to use restrooms, locker rooms and participate on sports teams that align with their biological sex instead of their gender identity.
In addition, school districts were instructed against hiding students’ gender transitions from parents. This would include if a student were going by a different name and preferred pronouns at school. The policies came out after a school district in Fairfax County, Virginia instructed teachers to hide gender transitions from their parents.
After Youngkin's guidance was published, students at several school districts in Northern Virginia staged walkouts over it. And, some cities said altogether they would not enforce it.
Ian Prior, a former Trump administration official who lives in Virginia and founded parental rights organization Fight for Schools, told the Post that the bill will protect women’s sports.
“It defies logic and law that further action is even necessary to protect fair competition for female athletes,” Prior said in a statement to the outlet. “It is of crucial importance that commonsense lawmakers take steps to maintain an equal playing field for female athletes.”
In a radio interview in August, Greenhalgh criticized the Biden administration’s “radical” push to revise Title IX to make “sex” include “gender identity.” This would undermine protections for women's sports.
Critics of the bill claimed that it would worsen the already-existing mental health crisis among school-aged children.
“Rather than introducing policy solutions that build safe and affirming schools though, our lawmakers are focused on attacking a student population that experiences extraordinarily high rates of depression and suicide,” members of the LGBTQ+ organization Pride Liberation Project said in a statement to the Post.
This week, Townhall reported that a biological male high school student-athlete was competing against women and winning after “struggling” in competitions against men.
“[The transgender student] ] is larger than any of the girls, and shamelessly takes 1st place on the podium. Now my daughter is competing against a male for scholarships. And we can’t even say anything. You can’t even approach it in a nice way without being labeled a hateful bigot. You will get threats against you,” a father of one of the female athletes told Libs of TikTok, who broke the story.
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