AUSTIN — Amid chaos at the Capitol and issues across the state, state lawmakers are again attempting to pass a law to safeguard young women in Texas.
On Monday, the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved Senate Bill 2, a proposed law to ensure male students would not be allowed to compete on designated women’s sports teams.
The bill states Texas public K-12 schools and universities “may not allow a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the institution that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.”
The proposal comes as school-aged girls across the country face the threat of losing their sports scholarships and opportunities to boys pretending to be girls.
The NCAA currently allows biological boys to intrude on girls’ sports and even threatened to move championship games away from Texas if state lawmakers chose to pass the bills to defend women.
The Republican-controlled Legislature could have approved multiple similar protections for women in their regular legislative session earlier this year, but state lawmakers chose to let the effort fail. The protections were one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priorities.
Monday’s Senate committee decision also came the same day more than 50 Democrat state representatives took off on a private jet to Washington D.C., breaking the state Legislature’s quorum and halting work in the July special legislative session. The Democrats walked out and fled the Capitol to stop a proposed election security law, the second time they’ve done so this year. Back in May, they were enabled by Republican leadership to abandon their desks and stop the reforms at the very end of the regular session.
Republican legislators could have also passed the priority election security reforms, women’s sports protections, and other most pressing laws months ago, but they chose not to.
Though the road ahead for the Legislature is still unclear, concerned citizens may contact their state representatives, senators, and Gov. Greg Abbott.
