COLOMBIA (AP) – A South Carolina House committee on Tuesday rejected a bill that would prevent transgender students from playing on women’s sports teams in elementary and high school.
The House Judiciary Committee presented the bill without a voting record, probably condemning any chance of approval in 2021.
South Carolina was one of more than 20 states that are considering restrictions on athletics or health services that confirm the gender for transgender minors this year. The Mississippi Legislature has already passed a ban on sports and similar proposals are going through other conservative legislatures in states like Alabama and Tennessee.
The ban’s death in South Carolina was swift. Republican Representative Micah Caskey asked that the measure be presented less than three minutes after it was introduced and Republicans were unable to get enough support to hold a registered vote.
Caskey said his problems started with the introduction of the bill. He stated that there are two biological sexes and that a person’s sex is objectively determined by genetics and anatomy at the time of birth.
“This is a comment on gender identity, very well. But a matter of urology, it just isn’t the case,” said the West Columbia Republican. “Physiologically, some people, as a percentage of the population, do not develop that way.”
Caskey said supporters of the bill failed to show that it was a problem that lawmakers needed to address, rather than officials who run high school sports in the state.
The bill would require all athletes in South Carolina to play in teams based on their “biological sex” listed on their birth certificates.
“This project is very simple. It just prevents biological men from participating in women’s sports,” Republican Representative John McCravy of Greenwood said when presenting the project at Tuesday’s meeting.
Supporters of the proposal, called the “Save Women’s Sports Law,” said girls could lose time playing games or scholarship possibilities if transgender athletes are allowed on their teams. But they also said that there were still no complaints from transgender students playing on women’s teams.
State superintendent of education Molly Spearman made an unscheduled appearance at a hearing to speak out against the bill earlier this month.
The independently elected Republican said she supports South Carolina’s League of Schools policy to consider any issue individually. The organization has no ban in place and there is no need for intervention by the General Assembly, she said.
Spearman said her responsibility is to ensure that all children feel protected and she believes that “this bill undermines this”.