Under the guise of “protecting girls and women,” Representative Steube and Senator Tuberville sponsored the introduction of H.R.28.
Washington D.C. — The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.28 – Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 on Tuesday, January 14. The bill aims to prohibit “school athletic programs from allowing individuals whose biological sex at birth was male to participate in programs that are for women or girls” — as stated in the bill summary.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) in the House and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in the Senate, sponsored the reintroduction of this bill.
“We’re less than two weeks into the 119th Congress and instead of fresh ideas to invest in the future of our children, we have a recycled and performative bill,” said Nikhil Vashee, Director of Education Law and Policy at Family Equality.”
Sports and athletics in schools are an important part of education. They give young people the opportunity to have fun and find a place of belonging. Family Equality strongly condemns the passage of H.R.28, a discriminatory bill that would deny trans, nonbinary, and intersex youth the opportunity to experience the joy of sports along with their classmates. As we have seen in states that have passed similar bills, these bans consistently result in bullying, harassment, and invasion of privacy for trans- and cisgender girls who don’t conform to a series of arbitrary standards.
Vashee said, “Kids are dealing with so much right now, taking away a source of community and belonging is unimaginably cruel.”
While there are no enforcement guidelines included in the measure, it would amend Title IX so that gender “shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
As part of Family Equality’s opposition to the bill, the organization signed on to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ letter along with more than 240 other national organizations.
About Family Equality
Family Equality is creating a world where everyone can experience the love, safety, and belonging of family. As the leading national organization for current and future LGBTQ+ families, we work to ensure that everyone has the freedom to find, form, and sustain their families by advancing LGBTQ+ equality through advocacy, support, storytelling, and education.
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(765) 490-4709 / tagnew@familyequality.org