North Carolina lawmakers gird for another possible veto showdown over transgender sports ban

Gov. Roy Cooper has sought to spur opposition to controversial bills in the days leading up to his vetoes. He’s expected to reject this one as well. That would set up another override showdown with legislative Republicans, who have enough votes to override the veto, and would likely do so.

Supporters of House Bill 574 say it’s inherently unfair for transgender women and girls to play against women and girls who were identified as such at birth. They say past exposure to testosterone in utero and after puberty makes transgender women and girls bigger, faster and stronger than athletes born as females, even when they’re taking hormone-suppressing medication.

Sen. Vickie Sawyer, sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, says the proposal would even the field in women’s sports, protecting girls and women from both potential injury by transgender competitors and unfair competition for awards and scholarships.

“Why do we even have men’s and women’s sports?” Sawyer said during a committee hearing on the bill last week. “This is about women, love of women and love of women's sports.”

The bill was ultimately amended to permit girls to play on boys’ and men’s sports teams and it advanced from committee to a vote on the Senate floor. Fifteen other states, mostly in the South, have enacted similar laws, according to Sawyer, R-Iredell.

Six LGTBQ+ people lined up to speak against the bill, including Karen Ziegler, a former pastor of an LGBTQ+ church, during Thursday’s meeting of the Senate Rules Committee.

“This is a really easy way to whip up hate and fear against a minority group that is not well understood,” Ziegler said. “Please stop picking on us. You're creating suicide in our youth and a climate of violence.”

“I am that most frightening monster, a trans woman athlete,” Vivian Taylor told the committee, saying she ran track at Albemarle High School many years ago, although her best time wouldn’t have risked “ruining the girls’ success.”

Taylor said she served in the NC national guard as a chaplain’s assistant in Iraq, and earned master’s degrees in public policy and theology from Duke.  

“Discrimination against trans kids puts them on a course to be discriminated against their whole lives,” Taylor said. “There are a tiny number of trans kids. Statistically, it's all noise.”

Nathaniel Dibble of Raleigh said the ban would hurt girls who are not transgender rather than protect them “because this bill makes their bodies a public concern.

“We've already seen many cases across the country where a cisgender teen athlete has been harassed by parents with accusations of them being trans,” Dibble said.

Dibble criticized members of the committee for “smiling and laughing in the back while we’re pouring out our hearts.”

Ivy Nangalia urged lawmakers to focus “on the actual issues plaguing women's sports: increase funding for schools and women's programs, invest in better facilities and equipment, and most importantly, thoroughly vet and background check coaching staff.”

“There are more people in this room than there are transgender athletes in this state,” Nangalia said.

Tami Fitzgerald with the religious conservative group NC Values Coalition was the lone speaker in the bill’s favor.

“In college and university sports, it's about winning,” Fitzgerald predicted. “If one team recruits a transgender-identifying male to play on their team, every team in that conference will have to recruit a transgender male.”

She added, “Bodies play sports, not identities.”

Fitzgerald went on to say that the ban upholds “the spirit of Title IX.”

According to the site BestColleges.com, 16 states now ban transgender females from playing on women’s sporting teams. The most recent addition was Missouri, where bans were signed by the governor June 7.

However, all these bans could be upended if the Biden administration advances a proposed rule under Title IX forbidding blanket bans on sports participation by transgender students. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the proposed regulation has already gone through the public comment process and is expected to be released in October.