SC Republicans’ renewed push for bill banning trans women athletes narrowly fails
For the second time this year, a committee of House lawmakers voted to throw out a bill that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in middle and high school women’s sports.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 11 to 13 to defeat the bill, which critics have called harmful to transgender youth.
The bill is part of a nationwide push to stop transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports, with proponents claiming that transgender women have a natural athletic advantage over their cisgendered counterparts. According to the LGBTQ rights group Freedom for All Americans, 35 similar bills had been filed across the country as of mid-March.
Critics — which include LGBTQ advocates, a group of medical professionals, some teachers and S.C. Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman — have said that the bill is discriminatory and harmful to transgender youth and their mental health.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers called the bill a solution in search of a problem during the meeting Tuesday.
Transgender girls and women trying to compete in women’s sports is rare in South Carolina. Currently, the South Carolina High School League has a process for schools to apply to allow a transgender student to participate in women’s sports. Very few transgender students have applied to play in sports, with only four students going through the process since it was instituted in 2016. Two students, both trans girls, have been granted waivers.
S.C. Rep. Micah Caskey, R-Lexington, compared the bill to several efforts at the State House to pass legislation banning Sharia law, or Islamic law. Conservatives pushed in the early 2010s to pass legislation banning Sharia law despite there being no evidence that there was any effort to implement it in South Carolina.
“This is not urgent,” Caskey said. “This is Sharia law 2.0.”
The Lexington Republican pointed to the High School League’s testimony that only four transgender students in South Carolina have applied to play sports. Caskey said while he believes that transgender women have an unfair advantage over their cisgender counterparts, he had issues with the “way at which the bill has been approached and the way it has demanded this committee’s time.”
S.C. Rep. West Cox, R-Anderson, introduced an amendment that would create a route for transgender women and girls to participate in women’s sports. Under Cox’s amendment, transgender girls would be required to undergo 24 months of testosterone suppressant treatment before being allowed to participate.
The amendment was similar to the NCAA’s policy, which requires college athletes who are transgender women to undergo a year of testosterone suppressant treatment before participating in women’s sports.
The amendment, however, drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Members of both parties expressed concerns that the amendment was requiring middle school or high school aged children to receive hormone therapy. S.C. Rep. Jeff Johnson, R-Horry, said the amendment “appears to promote hormone therapy in middle school and high school children.”
Another amendment was introduced later that would shorten the period trans girls would need to receive hormone blocking treatment to 12 months. A third amendment would require South Carolina to stick to the Olympic standards, meaning trans girls would have to receive a blood test showing a testosterone level of less than 10 nanomoles per liter.
All three amendments were ultimately voted down.
The bill’s opponents celebrated the Tuesday vote.
“We are relieved and grateful that, once again, lawmakers have rejected their colleagues’ blatant attempts to discriminate against transgender student athletes,” S.C. United for Justice and Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said in a statement. “Today’s vote sends the message that H.4153 — just like its predecessor, H.3477 — and any other bill that discriminates against transgender people has no place in South Carolina.”
This bill marks some Republican’s second attempt to ban transgender girls and women from women’s sports. A similar bill was tossed out in the House Judiciary Committee in mid-March in a voice vote, but supporters thought they had another shot at winning support and tried again.
During Tuesday’s meeting, S.C. Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, said it was unfair that the legislation got a second chance at passage.
“There are so many other bills that are waiting on us in Judiciary to hear, and we are here talking about this again,” Bamberg said.
If the bill becomes laws, it could have unintended consequences.
In early April, the NCAA, the governing body of collegiate sports, announced it would no longer hold championship events in states with discriminatory laws on the books.
“Our clear expectation as the Association’s top governing body is that all student-athletes will be treated with dignity and respect,” the NCAA said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring that NCAA championships are open for all who earn the right to compete in them.”
In response to the NCAA’s statement, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster said the organization should “mind its own business.”
If the state were banned from hosting NCAA championship games, it wouldn’t be the first time.
From 2001 to 2015, the NCAA banned South Carolina schools from hosting sanctioned championship events because the Confederate flag stood on the State House grounds. The NCAA reversed that decision in 2015, after the Legislature voted to remove the flag entirely from the Capitol complex following the deaths of nine Black Charleston churchgoers killed by a white supremacist.
