Good, but hardly enough.
A bill that would dictate on which sports teams transgender athletes can compete in public schools was declared all but dead on Wednesday by Rep. Harold Dutton, the Public Education Committee chair who presided over an emotionally charged debate over it a day earlier.
The bill drew criticism from more than 1,000 employers across the state and the NCAA, which threatened to cancel future sports championships in the state if it were enacted.
Dutton, a Houston Democrat, told Hearst Newspapers the bill didn’t have the votes to pass his committee, which is made up of six Democrats and seven Republicans.
“That bill is probably not going to make it out of committee,” Dutton said. “We just don’t have the votes for it … But I promised the author that I’d give him a hearing, and we did.”
The bill’s author, Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, said Wednesday that he would still like to see a vote.
“I believe this bill is critically important to protect fair play in women’s sports,” Hefner said. “I appreciate Chairman Dutton giving this bill a hearing and believe it deserves an up or down vote.”
Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Kingwood, the influential Republican who indicated he would not support the legislation at Tuesday’s hearing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While anything can happen in the final weeks of the 2021 legislative session — the language could be tacked onto another bill or the same bill could be sent to another committee, for example — the standstill marks a major roadblock for Republicans pushing it.
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Angela Hale, senior adviser of Equality Texas, an LGBT rights advocacy group, said the group was pleased to hear the bill likely won’t make it to the House floor, but she added there are still about 30 bills in total this session that target the Texans of the demographic.
“We’re grateful that members listened to the voices of families and real experts yesterday in Chairman Dutton’s hearing,” Hale said. “We ask the legislature, and especially leaders in the Texas House, to once again reject this unnecessary and harmful legislation and focus on issues that unite us as Texans.”
Wesley Story, communications manager for the liberal advocacy group Progress Texas, agreed, saying banning transgender athletes is “cruel” and deprives them of “an essential part of childhood.”
“Defeating this discriminatory bill is a huge win for equality in our state, but unfortunately, this battle is not over,” Story said. “Republicans have manufactured controversy around transgender youth in sports and are also targeting life-saving, gender-affirming health care with other bills making their way through the Capitol. Texans must continue to show up and fight to protect trans kids by opposing dangerous anti-trans legislation.”
The bill in question is HB4042, and it’s a companion of SB29, which you may recall was approved by the Senate last week. That bill was also referred to the House Public Education Committee, so one assumes that unless something changes it will not make it to the House floor. That’s good, but it’s worth at best a muted celebration. For one thing, there are other anti-trans bills out there, and any of them could get revived at a later time or tacked as an amendment onto another bill. Nothing is dead in the Legislature until sine die, and given that there will be at least one special session for redistricting, nothing can be considered truly dead until that session is over, too.
More to the point, the existence of and hearings on these bills represent an ongoing threat and attack on numerous families and children around the state, who have to work to prove their humanity to a bunch of people who see them as problems. No one should have to go through that. Further, if we manage to make it through this session without any of these bills passing, that doesn’t mean the fight is over. We thought we saw the end of this after the 2017 sessions, when the bathroom bills finally died. As long as the modern Republican Party holds power in Texas, the threat is real and it is present. The only way to end the threat is to end the Republicans’ monopoly on power in Texas.
I am glad the bill got killed. While I will never be for biological males competing against biological women. (I have two athletic daughters). I do not think we need a law addressing it. The law could be used as a foundation to stop women from competing in male sports. (I.e. women in football, a.k.a. kicker etc.)