A lawmaker in Washington on Thursday likened laws geared toward banning transgender athletes from women’ and ladies’s sports activities within the state to racial segregation in the USA, arguing that these throughout the aisle are “making a lot of the same arguments today.”
Washington Democratic state Rep. Kristine Reeves spoke throughout an govt session of the Home Training Committee on Thursday morning the place members of the committee launched SB 5123, a invoice that aimed to increase protections for college students, together with gender expression and gender id.
File – State Consultant Kristine Reeves, a Democrat from Washington, speaks throughout a Gun Security Spherical desk in Seattle, Washington on Friday, Sept. 27, 2019. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
“I recall a time in our country’s history not that long ago … where people like my grandfather were told that they could not participate in sporting activities because he was Black man,” Reeves spoke following a proposed modification to the invoice.
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“I can recall a time in our country’s history, Madam Chair, where people like my grandfather and my great-great grandfather were not allowed to participate in processes and places in our society because of the color of their skin because people for years – for generations – had told our society that Black people were less than human, that Black people were animals, that Black people did not have the brain capacity to compete with White Americans.”
Reeves claimed that just like the scientific research offered which have argued an unfair bodily benefit for trans athletes in girls’s sports activities, folks additionally “generated science to compel people to believe in the argument that my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my great grandparents were less-than in our society.”
“We are repeating history, Madam Speaker, in this debate and it is very, very scary to me that we are making a lot of the same arguments today about this subset of our population that my grandfather, my grandmother and my grandparents had to be subjected to for years, being told that they were less-than, that they didn’t deserve the same rights as other people because of the color of their skin.”
Republican lawmakers within the committee assembly disagreed with Reeves’ declare, together with her remarks that “we have the ability to evolve.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, joined by girls athletes, indicators the “No Men in Women’s Sports” govt order within the East Room on the White Home on February 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures)
“This particular amendment is focused on athletic participation and one thing that doesn’t change is bone density, lung capacity, and the ability that a male has versus a female,” Rep. Michael Keaton countered. “There’s been too many stories already this year of females being hurt, or females working their entire life to accomplish a goal and to be able to be successful in something, dedicate their life to it, and then a male changes categories and takes it all away from them.”
Rep. Travis Couture echoed that sentiment, including that the invoice modification “isn’t about the black-eye in history of our race relations.”
“I don’t view it as evolving,actually, ” he added. “I don’t think it’s a disingenuous argument from me or my side to say that our opinion of it is that we’re actually devolving from a time before Title IX, a time before women had rights in this country, a time before girls could actually go and compete in sports with other girls without having to risk being hurt or having scholastic or other opportunities robbed from them.”
“We’re going backwards in history, not forwards.”
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President Donald Trump signed an govt order final month that required entities that obtain federal funding to align with Title IX, which the Trump administration modified final month to acknowledge protections on the premise of organic intercourse – undoing former President Joe Biden’s 2024 rewrite.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes a query from a reporter throughout a information convention within the Roosevelt Room of the White Home on January 21, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photograph by Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures)
The Trump administration has keyed in on a number of states which have overtly refused to conform, prompting federal funding to be pulled. Most notably, the administration paused $175 million in federal funding to the College of Pennsylvania after the Division of Training launched an investigation into the college over potential Title IX violations.
The pause in funding was not a direct results of the investigation, which means the Ivy League faculty may stand to lose extra in federal funding.
On the state stage, Maine officers have been essentially the most outspoken over the refusal to adjust to the federal legislation, leading to a back-and-forth between the state and the Trump administration.
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