Democrats in the U.S. Senate recently blocked a Republican-written bill aimed at barring transgender women and girls from school sports teams designated for female students. The party-line vote of 51 to 45 thwarted considerations in the Senate of the G.O.P.’s latest move to use transgender people as a ‘hot button’ beginning at the beginning of Trump’s second term as president. The bill was also defeated in Congress in 2022.

In a unanimous vote, U.S. Senate Democrats voted to block the Republican-led bill H.R. 28, which would prohibit all schools that receive federal funding from allowing transgender athletes to play in women's sports.

The Democrats, who participated in a filibuster against the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” won the vote against Republicans 51-45. A 60-vote supermajority would have been necessary to advance the bill under Congressional rules.

The GOP bill was sponsored by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is a former college football coach, and looked to amend Title IX by only permitting athletes to play in women’s sports which are “designated for women or girls…based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” 

The federal Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 was intended to ensure equal opportunity in all educational programs and activities, including sports, by prohibiting sex discrimination in all schools from elementary to high school to colleges, if that school receives federal funding.

Trump and Congressional Republicans have for years been promising to end the ability of transgender athletes to participate in women’s and girls’ sports. It’s an issue that divides Democrats as well. Just this week California Governor Gavin Newsom referred to the idea of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports as “deeply unfair.” The comment was made on Newsom’s new podcast in a conversation with conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.

Soon after Trump took office in January 2025, he signed an Executive Order that said allowing “men” to compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”

In his executive order called “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” the president included his opinion that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 mandates that “educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.  As some conservative state courts have decided, “ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities.”  

President Trump, in his Executive Order, shared specific court decisions in two conservative states that agree with his opinion on not allowing trans-women, whom he referred to as “men,” from playing in women’s sports: Tennessee v. Cardona, 24-cv-00072 at 73 (E.D. Ky. 2024) and Kansas v. U.S. Dept. of Education, 24-cv-04041 at 23 (D. Kan. 2024).

In Tennessee v. Cardona, decided last year in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, the ruling blocked the Biden administration’s own order allowing transgender women to play in women’s sports, calling the order an “unlawful attempt to change the meaning of “sex” in Title IX—a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics—to include “gender identity.”

In the Kansas case, also decided last year, a federal district court ruled that Title IX was being violated by the Department of Education because “High schools and colleges were given three years to comply with the regulation on athletics which required equal opportunities for “members of both sexes” to participate in athletics. 34 C.F.R. § 106.41(c), (d).” In legal documents, the bill stated, “The regulations also provided that a recipient “may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.” 34 C.F.R. § 106.33.

In remarks to a Senate panel late last year, the President of the NCAA remarked that fewer than ten college athletes out of more than half a million are transgender. Nevertheless, the NCAA has implemented a rule barring transgender athletes from its programs due to the Executive Order signed by President Trump on February 5th.