There were enough of them on the committee to have a quorum by themselves, so they did the thing that they do.
Legislation that would limit transgender students’ participation in school sports advanced out of a Senate committee on Monday after similar legislation failed to pass during the regular session.
With no Democratic members present after dozens of Democrats fled the state, in an attempt to halt GOP-backed voting restrictions legislation, six Republicans on the Senate Health and Human Services Committee still had a quorum and held their first public hearing on two bills during the days-old special legislative session. Gov. Greg Abbott added the issue to lawmakers’ agenda when he called the special session.
Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who is also vice chair of the committee and who authored Senate Bill 2 and Senate Bill 32, said the bills would protect cisgender women’s rights to compete in their desired sports.
Both of the bills would require student athletes to participate on sports teams that correspond with the student’s sex assigned at birth or listed on their official birth certificate at or near the time of birth. SB 32 would impact sports at K-12 public schools, while SB 2 covers both K-12 and public colleges and universities.
“It reminds us that it’s not OK to destroy the dreams of one for the benefit of another,” Perry said during the committee hearing, arguing that transgender boys and men could take opportunities away from cisgender girls and women.
Advocates for transgender athletes and other opponents of the bill argued that there was little evidence that transgender athletes were joining sports teams.
Maddox Hilgers, who identifies as nonbinary and is a graduate student at the University of Houston, implored the committee to halt the legislation.
“This argument that transgender athletes will take over women’s sports is ridiculous, because there just not enough transgender girls to do that,” Hilgers said.
The University Interscholastic League of Texas — which oversees and governs high school athletics in Texas — currently requires the gender of students be “determined based on a student’s birth certificate.”
But the UIL recognizes changes made to a student’s birth certificate, including when a transgender person has the gender on their birth certificate changed to correspond with their gender identity, said Jamey Harrison, the UIL deputy director. But SB 2 and SB 32 would no longer allow that.
As the story notes, this is basically the same bill that was passed by the Senate in the regular session but eventually died on the House calendar despite the best efforts of Harold Dutton. At the time, the NCAA made some threatening noises about bills like this, but I don’t know how closely they’re paying attention now. Of course, as long as Dems in the House stay out of town, this bill and any others are dead in the water, but we all know the current situation will come to an end sooner or later. I don’t know how much something like this gets prioritized if we get into crunch time for redistricting, but I wouldn’t count on it disappearing. The Chron and Jessica Shortall, who live-tweeted the hearing, have more.