RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill that would restrict transgender athletes in women’s sports passed the state Senate Tuesday.
House Bill 574, dubbed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” would ban transgender women and girls from playing on women’s sports teams in middle and high school, as well as in colleges and universities. The bill passed Senate committees last week after amendments that removed restrictions on male sports teams and on collegiate intramural sports.
“This is a very common sense bill, it is not against anybody,” state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican from Cherokee County, said on the Senate floor. “It simply prevents biological males from playing girl’s sports.”
The bill prohibits “students of the male sex” from playing on “athletic teams designated for females, women, or girls” in all public middle and high schools, and private middle and high schools if the school is a member of an interscholastic athletic organization or playing against a team required to follow the provisions of the bill.
As for “institutions of higher education,” which include all public universities, private colleges or universities and community colleges, the bill applies to all athletic teams that are part of an “intercollegiate athletic program” such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
State Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Wake County Democrat, took offense to the use of the term “biological male,” calling it “disrespectful” to transgender women and used for “added political bonus.”
“It’s designed to tap into a human impulse toward dehumanizing people we don’t understand, or when we need to view some other group as less than or somehow dangerous,” she said on the Senate floor. “We’ll always use that impulse that people have to score political points. And until it’s no longer useful, they’ll keep doing it or until there’s a new target.”
All Senate Republicans and Democratic state Sen. Val Applewhite voted in support of the bill, which passed 31-17. Explaining her vote, Applewhite said it was a “tough decision to make” and was based off personal conversations with coaches, umpires and other constituents in her district.
“I even reached out to some members of the LGBTQ community who said they understood it as well,” she told The News & Observer. “I think it’s a misnomer to think that everyone in that community feels the same way, they’re not one groupthink.”
Applewhite was elected in 2022 after defeating then-incumbent state Sen. Kirk deViere in the Democratic primary off a rare endorsement from Gov. Roy Cooper. DeViere had voted with Republicans on a few bills, including on things like schools reopening and the state budget.
Democratic state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, of Mecklenburg County, also spoke against the bill on the Senate floor, calling it “unwarranted, unworkable, unfair and unkind to transgender high school and college students.”
“I think back to a recent meeting I had with a transgender female athlete who moved to our state because we did not engage in culture wars, then she shared with me full of tears, that she no longer feels welcome,” he said. “What do we say to her? What do we say to company after company who have announced thousands and thousands of jobs over the last few years, but now these companies may be unable to recruit the talent to fill the job vacancies because human resource directors feel calls about our state not being a welcoming and safe state?”
If the House concurs with the Senate’s decision to pass the bill, Cooper is likely to veto it. But the legislature could overturn his veto if all Republicans vote together.
A House committee passed a related bill Tuesday that would restrict access to gender-affirming care for some transgender minors. A similar transgender athlete ban was previously proposed by Republican lawmakers in 2021, but failed to pass the General Assembly.
Since then, a Republican supermajority combined with a viral story reported by Fox News in 2022 that a transgender athlete had injured a North Carolina volleyball player with a spike, has motivated Republican lawmakers to pursue the ban again.
If the bill passes into law, North Carolina would join 22 other states in banning transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project. In April, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would enact a similar ban nationwide. That bill is unlikely to pass a Democratic-controlled Senate and be signed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
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