Senate Democrats blocked legislation to bar transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports Monday evening.
Senate Democrats blocked legislation to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports Monday evening.
Senators voted 51 to 45 along party lines to defeat a cloture vote on Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The legislation would codify President Donald Trump’s executive order enacting a categorical ban on transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Senate Democrats chose to tank the legislation despite roughly eight in 10 Americans opposing transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports, including a majority of Democratic voters, according to New York Times-Ipsos polling conducted in January.
Tuberville’s bill would interpret Title IX to bar biological males from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and would withhold federal funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. The Biden administration’s attempt to rewrite Title IX to include gender identity, which would have opened up girls and women’s sports to transgender athletes, was ultimately blocked by a federal court judge.
“Instead of standing up for women and girls, Democrats voted to cosign Joe Biden’s attempted assault on Title IX,” Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Democrats who voted against the bill to protect women’s sports include Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, whose constituents appear to overwhelmingly support legislation to bar biological males from competing against women and girls.
Ossoff is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents up for reelection in 2026. Republicans sharply criticized his vote against the women’s sports bill Monday.
“Jon Ossoff could have joined the overwhelming majority of Georgians in the fight for common sense and keeping men out of women’s sports,” National Republican Senatorial Committee regional press secretary Nick Puglia said following the vote.
