WE WON: S.9, MAGA Republican anti-trans bill, defeated in Senate

Thanks to your calls, S.9, the bill to target transgender students with harassment and discrimination, has failed in the Senate with Democrats standing united to block a vote on the bill.

This bill would’ve amended Title IX, the federal statute that protects students from discrimination on the basis of sex, to legally require such discrimination against transgender students. Specifically, it would have prohibited trans girls and women from being on their schools’ girls’ sports teams. Trans girls would have been required to join a boy’s team. (The bill made no mention of trans boys, so even its discrimination was discriminatory.)

Contrary to the anti-trans talking points circulated by transphobes, transgender players, due to the hormone-replacement therapy that suppresses their testosterone, don’t have any particular advantage over cisgender players. Trans girls are girls, and trans women are women—in sports as in everything else.

We thank our Democratic Senators for standing strong to ensure transgender students have the same rights as cisgender students to participate in school sports. There is more to do, and the MAGA Republicans will no doubt try again, but for now, we’ve won this battle.

There’s a lot more work to do to stand up for our Trans community! Here are our ongoing calls to action: 

• Submit your public comment to defend trans people’s ability to submit accurate passport forms.

• Pressure your Senators to obstruct the Bureau of Prisons from moving trans women into men’s prisons. The good news is there has been a federal court injunction against the move, pausing it. The bad news is that we know the Trump administration will continue to pursue and defend anti-trans policies, and we need our Senators to stand up against it NOW.