A Republican-led bill to bar transgender girls from competing on girls and women’s elementary and secondary school sports teams in Minnesota is expected to be hotly debated on the state House floor Monday afternoon.
Debate on GOP-led bill to ban trans girls from girl sports begins in Minnesota House
Supporters and opponents gathered at State Capitol before potential vote.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 3, 2025 at 7:49PM
And if the morning’s events at the Capitol are any indication, the battle lines are starkly partisan.
The bill in question, called the Preserving Girls' Sports Act, was introduced last month by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, in the House Education Policy Committee, prompting a heated debate that reignited Monday. Discussion on the bill began shortly after 3:40 p.m.
A rally on the Capitol steps featured Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer, a conservative girls sports advocate and vice chair of Athletes for America with the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit supporting President Donald Trump’s policy initiatives, which include barring transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams.
Gaines, former team captain of the University of Kentucky’s women’s swimming team, tied University of Pennsylvania transgender athlete Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA Division 1 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship. Since then, she’s sued the NCAA, and testified before state legislatures and the U.S. Congress supporting laws to ban transgender girls from women’s sports teams.
“You have a governor, you have an attorney general, you have elected officials, essentially an entire political party who are willing to send a political message and do everything in their power to say that ‘We will put all Minnesotans at risk because we believe boys deserve to trample on girls,’” Gaines said. The crowd booed and hissed in response.
Gaines, who descended down the Capitol stairs flanked by state troopers and former Minneapolis police union chief Bob Kroll, said it was “crazy” that she needed a “an entourage of security for saying something as simple as men and women are different. It’s utterly insane.”
In a news conference following the rally, DFL opponents of the bill called it a waste of time and divisive. Although Republicans hold a 67-66 advantage in the House, 68 votes are needed to pass a bill and Democrats said they expect all of their brethren to oppose it. And if it were to pass, it would need to pass a DFL-controlled Senate to get to the desk of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
Rep. Brion Curran, DFL-White Bear Lake, said Minnesotans are unified in sending a clear message to the transgender community that “you are seen and you deserve to play with your peers.”
“We will not allow Republicans to discriminate and bully children for wanting to play, all children deserve to play,” said Curran, head of the Minnesota Legislative Queer Caucus. “We will not be complacent with this hateful and dangerous anti-trans rhetoric.”
The House bill in Minnesota comes after Trump signed an executive order last month intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls and women’s sports.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” gives federal agencies a broad berth to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
Also last month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi put Minnesota and several other states on alert that they may be sued after state leaders vowed to buck Trump’s executive order. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time he will not back down, arguing that compliance would violate state’s human rights protections.
The bill before the Minnesota House and its companion in the Senate defines a female as someone “biologically determined by genetics” and by “an individual’s reproductive system” that “at some point produces, transports and utilizes eggs for fertilization.”
It’s unclear how many transgender athletes are currently competing in Minnesota school sports. The Minnesota State High School League, a nonprofit organization that oversees high school athletics in the state, has said it does not require schools to report transgender athletes, stating it would be a violation of state data privacy laws.
The league voted in 2015 to open girls sports to transgender student-athletes, with the policy taking effect in the 2015-16 school year. The ruling made Minnesota the 33rd state to adopt a formal transgender student policy.
But now, at least two dozen states have opted to bar transgender girls from girls and women’s school sports teams, and several others are considering similar bans.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found the majority (about 66%) of U.S. adults favor or strongly favor laws and policies that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth.
But at the same time, the survey of just over 5,000 adults found 56% of adults express support for policies protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.
House Speaker Emeritus Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said time at the Legislature would have been better spent crafting bipartisan bills that tackle access to child care, health care and affordable housing.
“This is a distraction and a waste of time,” she said.
Jenkins made history as the city’s first transgender council member and went on to serve as council president. She will finish her term, which runs through the end of the year.
