The bill to limit trans athletes on collegiate athletic teams goes to Governor Greg Abbott

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A bill that would ban transgender athletes from participating in college teams that conform to their gender identity is coming to Gov. Greg Abbott for approval.

The Senate on Friday approved minor changes made by the House of Representatives to Senate Bill 15 before referring it to the governor, who had already said he would support such legislation.

In the Senate, Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, and Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, clarified that the legislation applies only to inter-campus sports between schools, not intramural sports, which are more casual and frequent are mixed games. The voting result was 19 to 12.

Throughout the legislature, LGBTQ advocates have railed against the bill.

“SB 15 is another invasive, impractical measure ordered by the Texas legislature to ‘fix’ a problem that doesn’t exist,” Melodía Gutiérrez, Texas director of the human rights campaign, said in a news release earlier this month. “Every student deserves an equal opportunity to engage in sports, be self-disciplined, participate in a team, and build a sense of belonging with their peers. We should not discriminate against students or ban them from playing because they are transgender.”

Senate Bill 15 requires athletes to join collegiate athletic teams that match their birth-assigned gender, regardless of gender identity. It provides whistleblower protection for people reporting violations at a collegiate athletics program and allows people to bring civil actions against a college or university if they believe the institution has broken the law.

According to the law, women would be allowed to join a men’s team if the school does not have a women’s team for the same sport.

The bill is one of several lawmakers are considering in this session that could significantly transform the lives of gay and transgender Texans. However, it is unclear what immediate impact this bill would have on Texas public universities. According to an Austin American-Statesman survey of public universities in Texas, the vast majority of Texas schools responded that to their knowledge they have not yet allowed a transgender athlete to compete at their university.

For more than a decade, the NCAA has allowed transgender women to participate in women’s sports if they have been taking testosterone-suppressing drugs to treat gender dysphoria for at least a year. But last year, the conference board of governors passed a new policy that established trans athletes’ qualifications for participation in each sport. LGBTQ advocates criticized the change because the conference gave in to political pressure from those who disapproved of the organization’s decision to allow Lia Thomas, a trans woman, to compete on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team.

The new NCAA guideline is still being phased in. Effective immediately, trans athletes wishing to compete in collegiate athletics must meet the previous 2010 policy requirements and report their testosterone levels at the start of the season and six months after the start of the competition.

Legal experts say the Texas legislature could open universities to Title IX lawsuits. In 2021, the Biden administration declared that the law created more than 50 years ago to outlaw gender discrimination applied to LGBTQ students. Last month, the government proposed an amendment to Title IX that would ban blanket bans that would bar transgender students from participating in sports teams that match their gender identity.

The proposal drew mixed criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups, who say it would still allow discrimination against trans students, while critics say it would endanger women’s sport.

“[T]”The proposed departmental regulation would attempt to enforce compliance with an uncertain, fluid, and entirely subjective standard based on a highly politicized gender ideology,” 25 Republican governors, including Abbott, wrote in a joint comment. “Most worryingly, the proposed regulation would upend the purpose of Title IX and jeopardize the many achievements of women in athletics.”

Last month, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend Title IX to require student-athletes to participate in athletic teams based on their birth-assigned gender. The bill is unlikely to pass in the US Senate, where Democrats have narrow control.

Disclosure: Human Rights Campaign was a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial backers play no part in the Tribune’s journalism. A full list of these can be found here.

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