Nebraska is the most recent state to ban transgender college students from women’ sports activities
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen signed into legislation Wednesday a measure banning transgender college students from women’ sports activities, making the state the most recent to maintain transgender athletes from competing on girls’s and women’ groups.
Pillen signed the legislation flanked by dozens of lawmakers, girls athletes and different advocates — together with former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, who has made a reputation for herself as a vocal advocate of banning transgender athletes from girls’s sports activities.
The measure handed by the Nebraska Legislature final week broke a filibuster by a single vote forged alongside get together strains. It was pared down from its preliminary kind, which additionally sought to bar transgender college students from utilizing bogs and locker rooms corresponding with their gender id.
Sponsors agreed to drop the toilet and locker room ban when one Republican — Omaha Sen. Merv Riepe — declared he would vote in opposition to it in any other case.
The measure was first launched in 2023 by then-freshman Sen. Kathleen Kauth, however didn’t advance as lawmakers angrily argued over Kauth’s different invoice that sought to bar gender-affirming look after transgender minors below the age of 19. An amended model that banned gender-affirming surgical procedure — however not all gender-affirming care — for minors later handed and was enacted that 12 months.
On Wednesday, Kauth promised to revive her toilet and locker room ban subsequent 12 months, reiterating her rejection that individuals can decide their very own gender.
“Males are women and men are girls,” she mentioned, and urged voters in Riepe’s district to stress him to help it.
Republicans behind the sports activities ban say it protects girls and women and their means to pretty compete in sports activities. Opponents say with so few transgender college students in search of to take part in sports activities, the measure is an answer in the hunt for an issue.
Fewer than 10 transgender college students have participated in center faculty and highschool sports activities within the state over the previous decade, in response to the Nebraska Faculty Actions Affiliation.
At the very least 24 different states have adopted comparable bans. President Donald Trump additionally signed an government order this 12 months meant to dictate which sports activities competitions transgender athletes can enter and has battled in court docket with Maine over that state’s permitting transgender athletes in women’ and girls’s sports activities.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska denounced the measure.
ACLU Nebraska Government Director Mindy Rush Chipman mentioned the ban “slams the door shut” for some transgender college students to completely take part of their faculty communities.
“This ban will solely create issues, not remedy any,” Rush Chipman mentioned, including that “the fixed focusing on of LGBTQ+ Nebraskans should cease.”