Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA (AP)-The Senate of the State of Pennsylvania on Tuesday approved a bill to prohibit transgender people from competing in women’s sports and girls at the university level and at the K-12 levels.
However, it seems unlikely that the initiative written by Republicans obtains a favorable vote in the State Representatives Chamber, controlled by Democrats.
The bill was approved by 32-18. Five Democrats joined the 27 Republicans to vote “yes.”
The vote marked the second time that the Senate controlled by the Republican Party approves this measure. A previous attempt, together with a camera controlled by the Republicans, found the veto of then Governor Tom Wolf in 2022.
This time, the Republicans of the Senate are promoting their initiative after President Donald Trump declared his intention to “keep men out of women’s sports” and turned it into an important campaign issue in last year’s elections.
Democrats have been divided into their response since then.
-The proposal applies to participation in sports of girls and women under the auspices of public institutions, including schools, universities and community schools.
It also prohibits any type of government agency or sports association investigating or punishing a school or institution of higher education for maintaining separate sports teams for girls or women.
For more than an hour, Republicans and Democrats discussed the bill, sometimes heatedly. Her driver Judy Ward, a Republican from Blair County, said the initiative “would ensure that all young women have a fair opportunity to compete in the sports they love.”
Ward said that since 2020 in Pennsylvania, 37 women have lost the first place and another 13 have been stripped of second or third place, although he did not say where he obtained the statistics. The governing agency of Penylvania high school sports, the interstate athletic association, reported that it only had knowledge of a transgender student who was currently participating in sports.
The leader of the Senate minority, Jay Costa, a Democrat of Allegheny County, described the bill as a discriminatory against transgender people, as well as “unnecessary, unjustified and unconstitutional.”
The Democrats warned that the bill will not advance in the Chamber, and a spokesman for the Democratic leaders there accused the Senate’s Republicans of being “more focused on the divisive political theater and in harassing children for political aspects.”
