HB11 has sparked much controversy in this legislative session. It leaves us with a conundrum: “Have we forgotten about the girls who will be forced to play against biological boys when competing for team positions and college scholarships?
This bill would not only destroy girls’ sports, but it would also allow the sharing of bathrooms, showers, dressing rooms, and the sharing of hotel rooms with biological boys when traveling with the teams. If the boys qualify for the team, then, they qualify to share the facilities.
“HB 11, Student Eligibility Interscholastic Activities, (Representative Birkeland) known as the Women’s Sports Bill, has passed the House and is now headed to the Business and Labor Committee in the Senate. This bill allows biological boys to compete on girls’ teams. For that reason, Utah Eagle Forum cannot support this bill. Right now, we have boys’ teams, girls’ teams and coed teams. If this bill passes, we will have only boys’ teams and coed teams.
Representative Birkeland has worked hard to come up with what she believes is the solution to a very serious problem. But any bill that still allows biological boys to play on girls’ competitive sports teams is not the solution. It is logical that boys are bigger, stronger, and faster than girls and the girls’ opportunity to fairly compete is greatly diminished.
HB 11 establishes the School Activity Eligibility Commission. The commission is to establish a baseline range of students in a given gender-designated interscholastic activity for a given age.
In creating the baseline ranges the commission shall include physical characteristics for the age and gender group in a given gender-designated sport, which may include height, weight, muscle mass, bone density, flexibility, wingspan, hip-to-knee ratio, stride, oxygen saturation, or the extent of physical characteristics affected by puberty.
A boy suffering from gender dysphoria, that wants to play on the girls’ team would have to register to play on the team and then the athletic association would have to notify the Commission who would then go through the process to determine the student’s eligibility. A girl who wants to play on the boys’ team would have to go through the same process.
What about the team dressing rooms, showers, bathrooms or even Hotel rooms when traveling? There is nothing in this bill that protects the girls from having biological boys in the dressing rooms with them. It just says reasonable accommodations based on gender identity to all students.
If you look of the definition of gender identity, these biological boys who just received eligibility would qualify as girls for the dressing rooms, etc. What is reasonable and who decides?
Starting on line 355 in the bill it states, “Nothing in this part prohibits an athletic association, LEA, or school from adopting reasonable rules and policies that designate facilities, including restrooms, shower facilities, and dressing facilities, provided that the rules and policies described in this section afford reasonable accommodations based on gender identity to all students.””
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