On Tuesday, a committee in the Pennsylvania state legislature advanced a bill that would ban so-called “transgender women” from competing in women’s sports.
According to The Hill, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ Education Committee approved the legislation by a vote of 15-9. The bill, if passed into law, would make it so that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls…may not be open to students of the male sex.” The bill defines “sex” as the “biological distinction between male and female based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up,” and would include public schools, community colleges, and state universities.
The far-left LGBTQ+ Equity Caucus of Pennsylvania issued a statement criticizing the bill, falsely declaring it “yet another attempt to inflict harm on one of PA’s most vulnerable communities.”
“This is a solution in search of a problem,” said State Representative Brian Sims (D-Penn.), co-chair of the caucus. “And with the number of trans women and girls who play sports actually being extremely small, we must recognize this for what it is — an inflammatory move meant to spark a culture war, not a meaningful policy solution for an issue impacting working Pennsylvanians.”
Similar bills to protect women’s sports have advanced in numerous other states around the country, successfully passing into law in states such as Texas and Iowa, but have also faced resistance even from some Republican governors in states like Indiana and Utah. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf (D-Penn.) has vowed to veto the legislation, despite the fact that such laws have proven overwhelmingly popular with the American public.