Pa. Senate votes to ban transgender athletes in girls' sports, but bill faces battle

Pennsylvania’s state Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports at the collegiate and K-12 levels, although the Republican-penned bill is unlikely to get a vote in the state’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

The bill passed, 32-18, with five Democrats crossing party lines to join with all 27 Republicans in voting “yes.” The vote marked the second time the GOP-controlled Senate has passed it. An earlier attempt, in concert with a Republican-controlled House, met then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s veto pen in 2022.

This time, Senate Republicans are advancing the effort after President Donald Trump declared his intent to “keep men out of women’s sports.” and made it a major campaign issue in last year’s election, dividing Democrats on how to respond.

The bill applies to participation in girls’ and women’s sports that are sponsored by public schools, public universities and publicly chartered community colleges.

It also prohibits any sort of government agency or athletic association from investigating or punishing a school or higher education institution for maintaining separate sports teams for girls or women.

For well over an hour, Republicans and Democrats debated the bill, at times hotly. The sponsor, Sen. Judy Ward, a Republican from Blair County, said the bill would “ensure all young women have a fair chance to compete in the sports they love.”

Ward said that since 2020 in Pennsylvania, 37 female athletes have lost first place and another 13 lost second or third place, although she didn’t say from where she drew the statistics. Pennsylvania’s governing body for high school sports, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association, said it was aware of just one transgender student currently participating in sports.

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, a Democrat from Allegheny County, called the bill discriminatory against transgender people, as well as “unnecessary, unwarranted and unconstitutional in my mind.”

Democrats warned that the bill will go nowhere in the House, and a spokesperson for House Democratic leaders accused Senate Republicans of being “more focused on divisive political theater and bullying kids for political points.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro ‘s office declined to comment Tuesday about the bill, although the Democrat has in the past expressed opposition to such bans, calling 2022’s bill “nothing more than cruel, designed to discriminate against transgender youth who just want to play sports like their peers.”

Trump, as president, signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

In February, the PIAA changed its policy in a move that some officials said was designed to follow Trump’s order, except that lawyers on both sides of the issue say the change in policy wording does nothing of the sort.

Previously, the PIAA’s policy had deferred to school principals to determine an athlete’s “gender” when “questioned or uncertain.” It changed the policy to defer to principals to determine a student’s “sex” when “questioned or uncertain,” and added a line that says that, in accordance with Trump’s executive order, “schools are required to consult with their school solicitors relative to compliance with the order.”

In response to Trump’s order, the NCAA revised its transgender participation policy to limit women’s college sports to athletes assigned as female at birth. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a governing body for smaller schools, effectively banned transgender athletes in 2023 from women’s sports.