Florida House votes to block transgender athletes

Would apply to girls’ school sports teams

Almost a dozen transgender girls have played on girls’ sports teams in Florida — without controversy — since inclusive policies were passed in 2013.

Now Florida lawmakers want to block transgender girls from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender. On Wednesday, Florida’s House of Representatives brought the state one huge step closer to a ban on transgender athletes.

After hours of emotional debate on Tuesday and Wednesday, lawmakers passed the bill 77 to 40, mostly along party lines. A Senate version of the bill has one committee stop left before it goes to a vote.

The bill, HB 1475, has become a hot topic — even as the bill’s sponsors admit that transgender girls competing on girls’ teams hasn’t caused any problems.

This week, the National Collegiate Athletic Association Board of Governors said it would consider pulling championships from states that ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. On the same night, the sponsor of the Senate version, Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, postponed the committee discussion on the bill. It was originally scheduled for discussion on Wednesday.

An NCAA boycott could cost Florida some 50 tournaments and an estimated $75 million over the next five years, lawmakers say.

State representatives discussed the bill for nearly four hours

on Tuesday. Democratic lawmakers offered up 18 amendments they said would address the concerns about transgender athletes competing in a more nuanced way than the bill’s blanket ban.

All 18 failed. The majority party rejected the amendments without explanation or debate.

The bill’s sponsors argue that what they’ve named the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” is needed to protect girls who could be denied athletic opportunities if they had to compete against transgender girls who were assigned male at birth.

Critics say the proposal is part of a thinly veiled attempt to target young and vulnerable transgender students that proposes “solutions” where there aren’t problems.

Florida’s House bill is similar to legislation passed in Idaho, which was quickly challenged in federal court and is now on hold after a judge ruled the state cannot ban transgender students from sports teams. Similar bans have been signed into law by Republican governors in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. Lawmakers are debating them in dozens of other states.

The Senate version would allow transgender athletes to join girls’ or women’s teams if their testosterone levels are below a certain limit for a year before they begin competition.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kaylee Tuck, R-Lake Placid, denied that the bill would ban transgender girls from playing. She argued that the bill “does not even mention the transgender language” and repeatedly referred to transgender girls using an anti-trans slur: “biological males.”

Florida is one of 16 states where high school athletic associations provide guidance that allows transgender students to join sports teams that align with their gender identity, according to the website Transathlete.com, which tracks such policies. The Florida High School Athletic Association requires documentation of “consistent identity and expression” and medical information as part of its process to clear transgender students to play on sports teams.

Since 2013, 11 athletes have gone through the documentation process. Jeanette Jennings, a South Florida mom of a transgender woman, said she still remembers what it meant for her daughter, Jazz, who was the first athlete to go through the process when she was in high school.

Jazz socially transitioned when she was 5 years old, Jennings said. Back then, she was already in love with sports and was playing on a co-ed soccer team.

When she was 6, word got out to the parents of players on another team that Jazz was trans. She was on a team that was doing really well at the time, Jennings said. The parents on the other team told their daughters to boycott the game.

“They told their daughters to sit down on the field if that quote unquote ‘boy’ is there,” Jennings said. “I couldn’t believe it. Often in life with Jazz, her biggest bullies have been adults. They’re the ones who make all the rules.”

In elementary school, adults told Jazz she had to go to the boy’s restroom or go to the nurse’s office. She chose to hold in her bladder. Once when she was 7, she snuck into the girl’s bathroom. An adult reprimanded her, saying “how dare you go into the girl’s bathroom.”

“Kids like Jazz are already marginalized. Kids like her are far more bullied, verbally and physically they’re assaulted and harassed and left out,” Jennings said. And they’re far more likely to take their own lives as teenagers, she said.

“They’re these group of sweet children and these laws want to come in and ban them,” she said.

The United States Soccer Federation banned Jazz from girl’s soccer when she was 8. They told her she could practice with her friends on the girl’s team, but would have to play on the boy’s team, Jennings said.

She tried. But the boys teased her for being a girl, Jennings said. She had anxiety attacks on the field, where she would freeze up and just stand there and had to be pulled off, she said.

Jennings and her family patiently escalated Jazz’s case to the highest level in the United States Soccer Federation, and they won.

“To this day, they have a trans inclusive policy that was brought on by Jazz’s situation,” Jennings said.

Once Jazz got to high school and joined the girl’s varsity tennis team, they were prepared and filed all the paperwork with the FHSAA before it could become a problem.

Jazz took hormone blockers at 11 and estrogen replacement therapy when she was 12, so she never went through male puberty. A facilitator presented Jazz’s case, and a doctor verified it.

“In the end, she was allowed to play tennis. There were whispers here and there, but nobody gave her a hard time because she went through the process she was supposed to go through,” Jennings said. “After being traumatized all those years she was banned from soccer, now she had fun with her friends and played and enjoyed it.”

Jennings says she can’t imagine what might have happened if her daughter had instead been banned from sports.

“We thought those days were behind us,” she said. “We just never thought we’d see stuff like this happening again. I thought better days were ahead.”