The Biden administration has announced that the president will veto the H.R. 734 bill that seeks to protect female sports from transgender athletes.
H.R. 734, also known as “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” was introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and is expected to come to vote in the House this week. The bill seeks to prevent biological males from participating in women’s sports. H.R. 734 will amend Title IX to recognize sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
The House Education and Workforce Committee already approved the bill 24–17, with Democrats voting against it and every Republican voting for it.
“The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 734,” according to an April 17 statement (pdf) made by the office of the Biden administration. “If the President were presented with H.R. 734, he would veto it.”
The Biden administration addressed the issue by focusing on “elementary schoolers” who would miss learning “life skills” if the bill were passed. “Politicians should not dictate a one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams.”
The statement talked about a “nationwide mental health crisis” suffered by transgender youth who will be further stigmatized following the passage of such a law. “Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools or on our playing fields.”
Moreover, the administration blamed Congressional Republicans for prioritizing policies that “discriminate against children” instead of focusing on “pressing issues” like “raising teacher pay, keeping guns out of schools, addressing the mental health crisis our youth face, and helping students learn and recover academically from unprecedented disruptions.”
However, the statement failed to address issues faced by female athletes due to the presence of males in competitions, which has historically never been allowed to happen due to the biological advantages males possess.
Challenging DOE Rule
H.R. 734 is a direct challenge to a newly proposed Title IX rule by the Biden administration’s Department of Education (DOE) that seeks to make school policies illegal if they “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.”
