State case sparks bills to curtail trans rights
Connecticut ‘patient zero’ for legislation regarding gender identity in youth athletics
Last month, Arkansas state Sen. Missy Thomas Irvin successfully sheparded through the legislature a bill requiring transgender youth to play on sports teams consistent with the sex listed on their birth certificates, not their gender identity.
But Irvin could not cite a single instance of the issue coming up in her own state. Instead, the Republican lawmaker pointed to Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, two trans sprinters from the Connecticut suburbs who competed in girls high school track and field events, prompting a lawsuit.
“When I saw what happened in Connecticut ... it really bothered me so much that men ... were trying to work to dismantle girls sports,’’ Irvin said in a recent interview with Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council.
The Connecticut case has become a Republican rallying cry in a brewing culture war over transgender civil rights. Critics say the outcry, fanned by conservative media, and funded by a Christian legal organization, is based on stereotypes designed to foster a fear of trans people. The legislation, they say, is aimed at a problem that is largely non-existent.
“Connecticut in many ways has served as patient zero for this,’’ said Gillian Branstetter, media manager for the National Women’s Law Center, a legal advocacy group based in Washington. “The most commonly cited instance by people who want to ban trans girls from equal participation is the 2018 girls track qualifier [in Connecticut], which three years later is still Exhibit A. They have no Exhibit B.’’
At least 66 bills that would prohibit transgender youth or college students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity were filed in state houses this year, according to a review by the Human Rights Campaign. Similar bills have been signed into law by the governors of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee and are awaiting executive action in three other states. (On Thursday, the governor of Kansas vetoed a bill barring trans athletes from competing in scholastic sports, saying
it sends a “devastating message” that the state is not welcoming.)
Connecticut, which has prohibited discrimination based on gender identity and expression since 2011, is not immune to the trend. Republicans at the Capitol have filed three bills addressing transgender participation in youth sports. But unlike the bills pending in red state legislatures, none of the Connecticut proposals received a public hearing and they are unlikely to win passage in the Democratically controlled legislature.
Still several prominent Connecticut Republicans are championing the issue, asserting that new laws are needed to ensure a level playing field for cisgender girls.
“I don’t believe the rights of our young girls should be pushed aside for others,’’ said Sue Hatfield, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Republican Party. “There is a reason why there are boys sports and girls sports. Boys are genetically stronger and faster and it’s just a fact that boys have an advantage to these girls on the track and field field.”
Whether transgender female athletes have a competitive edge has been the subject of study and debate: Research suggests that they lose some of their performance ability after they transition.
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the governing body for high school sports, concluded that it would be “fundamentally unjust and contrary to applicable state and federal law” to bar a student from participation on a gender specific sports team that is consistent with their public gender identity. The conference says its policy complies with a state law barring schools from discriminating against transgender students.
The state Republican party has allied itself with the four girls who filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the athletic conference policy. The plaintiffs argued that Miller and Yearwood, the two transgender runners, had an unfair physical advantage. The case is currently pending in U.S. District Court.
Last year, Connecticut Republicans presented the party’s Courage Award to Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith and Selina Soule, three of the plaintiffs. (A fourth, Ashley Nicoletti, has since joined the lawsuit.)
Democrats have pushed back. President Joe Biden pledged support for transgender students and their access to sports; on his first day in office, he issued an executive order barring discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
But the Connecticut case has galvanized conservative lawmakers around the country, said Christiana Holcomb, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy organization that is representing the four cisgender girls.
“They’re increasingly becoming aware of what has happened in Connecticut,” Holcomb said. “They want to make sure that that’s not replicated in their state.”
Associated Press recently interviewed dozens of sponsors of anti-transgender legislation. Almost none of them could cite a local example where trans participation in youth sports had become an issue.
Critics say the wave of bills limiting the participation of trans student athletes in youth sports programs is part of a broader coordinated agenda to limit transgender civil rights. The effort began more than five years ago, when several states passed so-called “bathroom bills” that sought to regulate who could use a women’s public restroom.
“There is a very conscious effort to exploit people’s fears and assumptions,’’ Branstetter said. Conservative politicians “sense an opportunity to turn the public against transgender people on athletics and are hoping to use that as a pivot point on many more limitations on transgender people’s participation in public society.”
In tandem with the bills governing trans student athletes, several states have also weighed measure that would place limits on transgender health care for children.
“I don’t know if these legislators know but there’s a whole pandemic going on and there isn’t really a huge public appetite for driving this much political energy behind an issue that by and large hasn’t really been a problem,’’ Branstetter said of the anti-trans bills.
Transgender people make up a tiny fraction of the population: A 2016 survey by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law found that about 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender.
Studies show transgender and non binary youth have higher rates of suicide than the overall population. The Trevor Project’s 2020 national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health found that 52% of transgender and nonbinary youth had seriously considered suicide in the past year, compared to 40% of all LGBTQ youth respondents. Transgender people exposed to gender conversion therapy — the practice of forcing a person to conform to the sex they were assigned at birth, not to the one they identify with — have an especially high suicide risk, another recent study found.
Barring trans youth from participating in sports programs that align with their gender identity could have devastating personal consequences, said Liz Kurantowicz, a Republican strategist from Connecticut.
“[Take] the amount of mental anguish and emotional distress that any kid feels going through high school [and] middle school ... magnify that by a million” for transgender youth, she said. “If running track or swimming or whatever is going to keep them from hurting themselves, I’m for it 1,000%.”
Supporters of the legislation say these bills are about protecting women, not penalizing trans athletes. “That’s how I view this issue: as a woman’s rights issue’‘’ said Hatfield, the state GOP chairwoman. “Women have come so far but they still only earn 80% of what men do. Fewer than 10% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. The country has yet to elect a women president.’’
Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott said the bill he proposed in Connecticut was not intended to be punitive to transgender athletes. Senate Bill 324 would empower local school districts or organizations to make their own rules regarding participation in youth sports.
“I believe in freedom and civil liberties for every person. That includes those students that identify as transgender and also the organizations and sanctioning bodies that determine what the criteria for eligibility in competition will be,’’ Sampson said in an email.
“Unlike legislation passed and/ or being proposed in other states, this bill does not make a blanket prohibition on any students from participating in sports. What this bill does is protect the freedom of schools, sanctioning bodies, students and staff equally and without allowing anyone to force their will or opinion on others,’’ Sampson added.
To Kurantowicz, the GOP strategist, the role of government in the debate is clear: “I don’t think this belongs in the public square,’’ she said. “These are very personal decisions that need to be made between a parent and a child and their coach and their doctors.”