Title
Urging the Pennsylvania state legislature and Governor Tom Wolf to reject House Bill 972, intended to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in high school and/or collegiate sports according to their gender identity.
Body
WHEREAS, On January 20, 2021, his first day in office, President Biden signed an Executive Order "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation." The Executive Order allowed transgender children to play school sports according to their gender identity; and
WHEREAS, Title IX states, "No person . . . shall, on the basis of sex, . . . be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance"; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton (2020), held that firing a transgender or gay person was discriminatory based on sex because they were not accepting of traits or characteristics that would be acceptable in a person of another sex; and
WHEREAS, Throughout our history, transgender Americans have been targeted by discriminatory legislation at all levels of government; and
WHEREAS, Concern over transgender athletes - based in biologically essentialist assumptions about the bodies of trans women and girls - has a long history, including a 2017 lawsuit where the Trump Administration joined an anti-trans legal group and cisgender girls who lost track events to two Black trans girls; and
WHEREAS, A report from The New York Times found that out of about 200,000 collegiate women athletes, roughly 50 are transgender; and
WHEREAS, In the 2021 legislative session, nearly 30 states have pending legislation excluding transgender youth from athletics, including in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Almost all of this legislation is directly targeted at transgender girls and deliberately misgenders them; and
WHEREAS, Pennsylvania House Bill 972 would prohibit transgender children from participating in high school and/...
Click here for full text