ST. PAUL, Minnesota – A Republican-led bill prohibiting transgender girls from competing on girls’ and women’s elementary and secondary school sports teams in Minnesota was hotly debated on the state House floor Monday but failed to pass. Rep.
Peggy Scott (R-Andover) introduced the Preserving Girls’ Sports Act last month. It sparked more than two hours of debate before Monday’s vote, mostly along party lines.
With protests and counter-protests at the Capitol, Democrats vehemently opposed the bill, claiming it would bully children, subject girls to invasive medical exams, and eliminate transgender people from society. “It is pure erasure from a community based on who they are,” said Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, a transgender person.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a movement in the history of the world that has been favorably looked upon by history for looking at kids, determining there is a characteristic about them you may not like, and cutting them out.” Republicans framed the issue as one of fairness and safety, claiming that sports have always included gender, age, school size, and other distinctions, and that the bill would uphold Title IX protections that ushered in girls’ and women’s sports decades earlier.
“For decades, males had great privileges in athletics while girls were sidelined,” he said. “It is our duty to protect female athletes in the state of Minnesota.”
Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer, a conservative girls sports advocate, and vice chair of Athletes for America with the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit that supports President Donald Trump’s policy initiatives, including the ban on transgender athletes competing on women’s sports teams, spoke at an earlier rally on the Capitol steps.
Gaines, a former team captain for the University of Kentucky women’s swimming team, tied University of Pennsylvania transgender athlete Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA Division 1 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship. Since then, she has sued the NCAA and testified before state legislatures and the United States Congress in support of legislation that would prohibit transgender girls from participating on women’s sports teams.
“You have a governor, you have an attorney general, you have elected officials, essentially an entire political party who are willing to send a political message and do everything in their power to say that ‘We will put all Minnesotans at risk because we believe boys deserve to trample on girls,'” Gaines said. The audience booed and hissed in response.
Gaines, who descended the Capitol stairs flanked by state troopers and former Minneapolis police union chief Bob Kroll, called it “crazy” that she needed a “security entourage” to say something as simple as men and women are different. It’s absolutely insane. Following the rally, DFL opponents of the bill criticized it as a waste of time and divisive.
Although Republicans have a 67-66 advantage in the House, 68 votes are required to pass a bill, and Democrats have stated that they expect all of their colleagues to oppose it. If it passes, it must first pass through the DFL-controlled Senate before reaching Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s desk.
Monday’s vote on the bill was divided along party lines until House Majority Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, switched his vote for procedural reasons, allowing the measure to be reconsidered and tabled. Rep. Brion Curran, DFL-White Bear Lake and chair of the Minnesota Legislative Queer Caucus, stated that Minnesotans are united in sending a clear message to the transgender community: “You are seen and you deserve to play with your peers.”
“We will not allow Republicans to discriminate and bully children for wanting to play, all children deserve to play,” according to Curran. “We will not be complacent with this hateful and dangerous anti-trans rhetoric.”
The Minnesota House bill comes after Trump issued an executive order last month banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” gives federal agencies broad authority to ensure that entities receiving federal funding comply with Title IX, in accordance with the Trump administration’s interpretation of “sex” as the gender assigned at birth.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Minnesota and several other states that they could face legal action if they refused to comply with President Trump’s executive order. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison stated at the time that he will not back down, claiming that compliance would violate the state’s human rights protections.
The Minnesota House bill and its Senate counterpart define a female as “biologically determined by genetics” and “an individual’s reproductive system” that “at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.”
It is unclear how many transgender athletes are currently participating in Minnesota school sports. The Minnesota State High School League, a nonprofit organization that oversees high school athletics in the state, has stated that schools are not required to report transgender athletes because it would violate state data privacy laws.
The league voted in 2015 to allow transgender student-athletes to participate in girls’ sports, and the policy went into effect for the 2015-16 school year. The decision made Minnesota the 33rd state to implement a formal transgender student policy. However, at least two dozen states have chosen to exclude transgender girls from girls’ and women’s school sports teams, and several others are considering similar bans.
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, the majority (66%) of U.S. adults favor or strongly support laws and policies requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. However, a survey of slightly more than 5,000 adults found that 56% of adults support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public spaces.
House Speaker Emeritus Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said her time in the Legislature would have been better spent crafting bipartisan bills addressing child care, health care, and affordable housing.
“This is a distraction and a waste of time,” she said.
