On Monday, the Senate failed to advance a GQP-led bill that would prohibit federal funding from going to K-12 schools that include transgender students in women’s and girls’ athletic programs.
The measure stalled on a party-line vote of 51 to 45, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and be brought up for consideration.
Democrats denounced the legislation as a craven effort by Republicans to play politics with a small but vulnerable population of transgender children, ultimately putting at risk the girls it claimed to protect.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville sponsored the bill that mirrored Trump’s executive order called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and was admittedly a trap set for the Democrats to appear “out of touch” with the mainstream point of view.
“Democrats can stand for women or stand with a radical transgender ideology,” Majority Leader Sen. John Thune said on Monday. If they opposed the legislation, he said, “they’ll have to answer to the women and girls they vote to disenfranchise.”
Senate Democrats argued that the legislation was not only an attack on basic human dignity, but also a waste of time. Of more than 500,000 N.C.A.A. athletes, they noted, fewer than 10 identified as transgender.
“What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other and distract people from what they’re actually doing,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. He called the bill “totally irrelevant to 99.9 percent of all people across the country.”
While many Democrats agree that there are real concerns with transgenders competing in higher level sports, they argue that athletic associations should be making those decisions, not lawmakers passing broad bills at the federal level that lump together competitive athletes and young children who simply want to participate in school activities with their friends.
More than two dozen states already bar transgender athletes from participating in school sports, whether in K-12 schools or at the collegiate level.
