Indiana House committee advances bill to ban transgender female college athletes

By Garrett Bergquist

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    INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana’s House Education Committee approved a bill that would ban transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams at any public or private university in the state.

The bill also sets up a process for a student or a parent to file a legal complaint about any suspected violations. The bill comes barely a week after the NCAA changed its policies to ban transgender women from NCAA-sanctioned college women’s teams and President Trump signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to penalize any school that allows transgender women to compete on women’s teams.

Two female former college athletes on Wednesday told a House committee that competing with transgender players put them at a disadvantage.

Elle Patterson told the committee she left the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team over the alleged presence of a transgender teammate. She said she was forced to share hotel rooms and a locker room with the player. Patterson is now part of a lawsuit against the university over the player’s presence.

“It remains humiliating and distressing to me that I undressed in front of a man without my consent,” she said.

Neither the player in question nor San Jose State University have commented publicly on the matter and the player has never publicly discussed their gender.

Selina Soule, a former high school track and field athlete from Connecticut who now is an ambassador for the Riley Gaines Center, said two transgender female athletes dominated the 2019 season at the expense of girls like her. She wondered how many athletic scholarships were taken away from cis women as a result.

Hard data on transgender athletes remains hard to come by. NCAA President Charlie Baker in December told Congress he was aware of “less than 10” transgender female athletes across all levels of sports sanctioned by the association. The IHSAA, which sanctions all high school athletics in Indiana, said it is only aware of one instance of a transgender female athlete applying for a waiver under its pre-2022 transgender athlete policy. That athlete withdrew their application before IHSAA officials could make a decision.

Indiana lawmakers three years ago banned transgender girls from competing on girls’ scholastic sports teams at the K-12 level. Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, who wrote the college sports ban, also wrote that law. House leaders even assigned both bills the same number: House Bill 1041.

GenderNexus CEO Emma Vosicky said states with anti-trans legislation already have seen a fourfold increase in school violence against transgender students. If lawmakers were truly serious about leveling the playing field for female athletes, she said, they would have filed legislation dealing with other inequities in women’s sports.

“This bill is designed to out and target and place a target on the back of every person who is trans or is a female who, for some reason, whose appearance appears not to meet the norm,” she said. “Those people are going to be open to gender investigation, because no one can quite be certain what is and is not going to be good faith.”

The committee approved the bill on a 12-1 vote, sending it to the full House. Three Democrats joined all of the panel’s Republicans in voting for the bill, though they indicated they have serious misgivings about the bill and might vote against it on the House floor.

The original version of the bill also would have required out-of-state teams to notify Indiana colleges at least 60 days in advance if they had any transgender players on their roster. That language was removed on Wednesday.

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