GOP-led bill to ban trans girls from girls' sports fails to pass Minnesota House

A Republican-led bill to bar transgender girls from competing on girls' elementary and secondary school sports teams in Minnesota was hotly debated on the state House floor Monday before failing to pass.

The bill, called the Preserving Girls' Sports Act, was introduced last month by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover. It prompted more than two hours of debate before Monday’s vote mostly along party lines.

With protests and counter-protests at the Capitol, the bill was vehemently criticized by Democrats as legislation that, in effect, would bully children, subject girls to invasive medical exams and erase transgender people from society.

“It is pure erasure from a community based on who they are,” said Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who is transgender. “I don’t think there’s ever been a movement in the history of the world that has been favorably looked upon by history for looking at kids, determining there is a characteristic about them you may not like, and cutting them out.”

Republicans framed the issue as a matter of fairness and safety, arguing that sports have always included divisions based on gender, age, school size and other factors, and that the bill would maintain Title IX protections that ushered in girls' and women’s sports decades ago.

“For decades, males had great privileges in athletics while girls were sidelined,” Scott said. “It is our duty to protect female athletes in the state of Minnesota.”

An earlier 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. The nonprofit supports President Donald Trump’s policy initiatives, which include barring transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams.

Gaines, former 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 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 divisive waste of time. Although Republicans hold a 67-66 advantage in the House, 68 votes are needed to pass a bill and Democrats said they expected all of their caucus to oppose it. And if it were to pass the House, it would need to pass a DFL-controlled Senate to get to the desk of DFL Gov. Tim Walz.

Monday’s vote on the bill hewed to party lines until House Majority Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, switched his vote for procedural purposes, allowing the measure to be reconsidered and tabled.

Rep. Brion Curran, DFL-White Bear Lake and head of the Minnesota Queer Legislators Caucus, 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,” Curran said. “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 broad authority 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 a person 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 Minnesota House bill and its companion in the Senate define 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 Emerita 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.