Idaho is about to join national debate over transgender student-athletes
An Idaho legislator is planning to bring forward a bill that seeks to limit transgender athletes’ participation in high school sports.
Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, a former Division I women’s basketball coach and college basketball player, and current youth basketball coach, said this is an issue she’s passionate about.
“I want to make sure that girls and women have the same opportunities to compete, just as boys and men do,” Ehardt told me Wednesday. “It’s already difficult for girls and women, and I know first-hand how hard we had to fight to get where we are today. I just don’t want us to go backwards.”
Ehardt attended North Idaho College and Idaho State University on a basketball scholarship. She said she treasures the strides that women have been able to make under Title IX, but she said allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls and women’s sports would threaten that.
Ehardt would not discuss specifics of the bill yet because she has not introduced it in the just-started session, but she said she’s been working on it for the past year.
“Boys and men already have too many advantages over young girls participating in sports,” Ehardt said after a meeting of the Education Committee, of which she is a member. “There is absolutely an inherent advantage that boys and men have, and we simply cannot compete. I just want us to keep the playing field fair.”
But youth programs manager for the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network a.t. Furuya said fears about transgender athletes competing in girls sports are just that — fears.
“When we’re basing something off of a fear or a concern, we’re right off the bat already not even giving anyone a chance,” Furuya, who identifies as non-binary and transgender, said in a phone interview. “We’re just making a decision based off what we think is going to happen. We have to remember, too, that these trans girls are girls. They’re girls. When we have segregated sports, there’s a boys team, there’s a girls team. It does not make any sense to put trans girls on a boys team, just as it doesn’t make any sense to put trans boys on a girls team.”
Idaho has a policy in place
Ty Jones, executive director of the Idaho High School Activities Association, said he has received just a couple of inquiries about Idaho’s policy and has fielded occasional calls about potential transgender athletes over the past five or six years, but so far, Idaho has not had an athlete use the policy.
The IHSAA, a nonprofit member organization that oversees high school athletics and activities in Idaho, has had a policy governing transgender student participation in sports for the past seven or eight years, Jones said.
According to Idaho’s policy, “A male-to-female transgender student athlete who is taking medically prescribed hormone treatment under a physician’s care for the purposes of gender transition may participate on a boys team at any time, but must complete one year of hormone treatment related to the gender transition before competing on a girls team.”
Changing the policy to prohibit a transgender student from competing in a sport is not only discriminatory, it also does harm to the student, Furuya said.
“When these issues come up for debate, my first question is, ‘Don’t you believe all students deserve to be safe at school? Don’t you believe that all students should have access to education, don’t you believe that all students should be able to participate in sports?” said Furuya, who has worked with youth for 20 years, coached high school track and field, and whose area of specialty is in working with transgender students.
“We as adults are called to make sure students are taken care of and that they have access to opportunity, and when that is being taken away, we need to evaluate ... what does that mean when we take that away from some students and not others?”
GLSEN is a national nonprofit organization that advises on, advocates for and researches policies designed to protect LGBTQ students and students of marginalized identities.
“Sports has been a great outlet, a great source of community building, organizing, also release, physical exercise, and that access should be allowed to everybody, and I think the more barriers we put up to students to access these things, we’re not setting them up to succeed,” Furuya said. “I want to remove those barriers and make sure they have access to their rights, and education is their right.”
Ehardt spent 15 years as an NCAA Division I women’s basketball coach at UC Santa Barbara, Brigham Young University (Provo), Washington State University and Cal State Fullerton. She owns and operates a business running camps and clinics, and runs a traveling basketball program for high school boys.
“Coming up in the ‘80s, I absolutely reaped the rewards of Title IX providing an opportunity to us gals,” she said. “Now, as a coach, I can continue to carry that torch to provide opportunities for the next generation of women.”
For Ehardt, she sees this as a safety concern, as well.
“All of my years of coaching and working with young girls, I can tell you first-hand that girls are afraid to compete when competing with boys,” she said. “It inhibits their ability to perform, aside from just the physicality, but there’s a true intimidation factor. It’s hard for a lot of girls and women.”
Other states addressing the issue
Idaho is not alone in dealing with the issue.
A Republican lawmaker in Georgia last month filed legislation that would ban teams from using public facilities if transgender children are competing in single-gender sporting events that don’t align with their gender identified at birth, according to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
State Rep. Philip Singleton said he filed the bill because he didn’t want anyone to have an “unfair advantage,” according to the newspaper.
“The Student Athlete Protection Act is designed to ensure that biological boys will only compete in sports against other biological boys and vice-versa for girls,” Singleton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The intent of my bill is to make sure every student has the opportunity to compete fairly.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Republican legislators in at least five other states have drafted measures aimed at preventing athletes from competing in categories different from their biological sex. Lawmakers say they are specifically concerned about female athletes facing unfair competition, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Bills have been introduced or prefiled in New Hampshire, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Policy can also have an effect opposite of the intent.
In Texas, school district superintendents and athletic directors in 2016 voted, 409-25, in favor of using birth certificates to determine student athletes’ gender, according to The Texas Observer news site.
Mack Beggs, an 18-year-old senior wrestler from a high school near Dallas, was transitioning from female to male and taking a low dose of testosterone, according to The Guardian newspaper. Beggs asked to wrestle in the boys’ division, but the rules for Texas public high schools required athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, according to The Guardian.
Beggs won the girls state wrestling championship in 2017 and 2018.
Ehardt said she is familiar with this case and said that her bill “will be dealing with the hormonal aspect of this.”
Federal policy changed
Jones, of the IHSAA, said the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter to the Idaho High School Activities Association about three years ago saying Idaho’s policy was discriminatory and needed to change.
In May 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights issued a letter providing details of those offices’ positions on discrimination, including gender identity.
“Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and its implementing regulations prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance,” according to the letter. “This prohibition encompasses discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.”
When IHSAA received the letter, legal counsel said to hold off, Jones said, pending who won the presidential election. Donald Trump was elected, and “that letter went away,” Jones said.
In February 2017, the departments of Justice and Education issued a new letter officially withdrawing the previous statements and policy guidance on transgender students, citing, in part, “a federal district court in Texas held that the term ‘sex’ unambiguously refers to biological sex.”
“In addition,” the letter states, “the Departments believe that, in this context, there must be due regard for the primary role of the States and local school districts in establishing educational policy.”
Mike Keckler, chief communications and legislative affairs officer for the state Board of Education, said the board does not have a policy or position on the subject. Kristin Rodine, public information officer for the state Department of Education, said the department does not have any policy or position on the issue.
“We are all in a position to choose the life we want to live,” Ehardt said. “But we are not in a position to choose the consequences. We seem to be more concerned with the consequences than we are concerned about preserving opportunities for young girls and women.”
For Furuya, the issue is about the right way to develop students — all students — into young adults.
“These are kids,” Furuya said. “These are girls who identify as transgender, but they deserve safety, and they deserve opportunity just the same as all the other students. So it comes back to, these are human beings, and how are we engaging with each other? Where is the empathy? There’s a way to dehumanize people when it’s a concept and not a person. We need to come to remember that these are people.”
