GOP lawmakers look to ban transgender athletes from sports

House and Senate Republicans on Tuesday refiled legislation to bar transgender women and girls from competing on school sports teams that match their gender identity, jump-starting work on an issue the GOP promised to prioritize in the new year. 

The bill, titled the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, would amend Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools and education programs that receive government funding — to prohibit schools from allowing transgender female athletes to participate in an athletic program or activity “that is designated for women or girls.” 

It defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” 

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) is the primary sponsor of the measure in the House, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is leading the measure’s introduction in the Senate. Both men sponsored identical bills last year, with mixed success. 

Transgender people and issues played a central role in GOP campaigns in 2024, and President-elect Trump has promised to ban trans women and girls from competing on female sports teams when he takes office later this month. 

“Republicans have promised to protect women's sports, and under President Trump's leadership, we will fulfill this promise,” Steube said Tuesday in a statement.

Voters, Steube added, have “loudly spoken” against allowing transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that best align with their gender identity. Most Americans oppose including transgender athletes in sports, according to polls conducted by Gallup, the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post. 

“President Trump ran on the issue of saving women’s sports and won in a landslide,” Tuberville added Tuesday.

A spokesperson for Tuberville told Fox News that the first-term senator is working closely with the incoming Trump administration on the issue. Tuberville’s office did not return a request for comment on the senator’s conversations with Trump. 

“I have said many times that I think Title IX is one of the best things to come out of Washington. But in the last few years, it has been destroyed,” Tuberville said Tuesday, referring to changes made to the landmark sex discrimination law by the Biden administration. 

The Education Department in April finalized a set of changes to Title IX, including an expansion of the law’s protections for LGBTQ students, which triggered a wave of lawsuits from Republican-led states that argued the new regulations undermine the law’s original intent.  

The Biden administration’s rule, which modifies the definition of sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity, does not apply to school sports, as some conservative leaders — including Trump and Tuberville — have argued. The administration withdrew a separate proposal meant to address transgender student-athletes in December. 

“While I’m glad that the Biden administration ultimately rescinded the proposed rule, Congress has to ensure this never happens again,” Tuberville said Tuesday, referring to the rule governing athletics eligibility. 

The Senate, now controlled by Republicans, is likely to take up the measure. The upper chamber declined to do so last year after the GOP-led House passed Steube's bill. 

The legislation will be one of House Republicans’ top priorities this Congress, according to its initial package of rules. 

“This bill would make girls’ sports safe for girls again, and I’m going to do everything in my power to help it pass Congress quickly,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), one of the Senate bill’s 29 Republican co-sponsors. 

Kennedy, a vocal opponent of transgender athletes in women’s sports, has said previously that he believes trans women and girls “have obvious and significant advantages” over cisgender, or non-transgender, women in sports. 

“I mean, unless you are the reason that your parents drink, you know that,” Kennedy said during a floor speech in May. 

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on federal regulations around sports gambling last month, Kennedy grilled NCAA President Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, over transgender athletes in college sports. 

Baker testified that there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes he is aware of who currently compete at NCAA member schools, accounting for less than 0.01 percent of all NCAA athletes nationwide.