Under the House Bill 25 Governor Greg Abbott signed into law Monday, Texas’ transgender girls will be banned from participating in female sports at public schools, Texas Tribune reports.
The law authored by GOP Rep. Valoree Swanson, that is set to go into effect Jan. 18, will require students who compete in interscholastic competition to play on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate at or near their time of birth.
It goes further than the University Interscholastic League’s current rules that say a student’s gender is determined by their birth certificate but also accepts legally modified birth certificates in which a person has had their sex changed to align with their gender identity.
The bill, according to its supporters, aims at protecting fairness in school sports by eliminating the inherent physical competitive advantage of transgender athletes playing on female teams but advocates for equal rights call such restrictions discriminatory since there’s little or no evidence that trans women or girls are dominating sports.
They claim the measures are based on hate and that its real purpose is to energize hard-core social conservatives.
By signing the law, Abbott included Texas in the wave of similar measures emerging from Republican-controlled statehouses across the country after at least seven other states have passed similar laws this year since Idaho barred in March 2020 transgender girls from competing on women sports teams in public schools or colleges.
Though a federal court blocked the Idaho ban’s enforcement pending the outcome of a legal challenge against the measure, other states- including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and West Virginia- have followed Idaho’s lead,
South Dakota’s governor, on the other side, acted by executive order.
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