Senate Dems Kill Legislative Effort To Protect Women’s Sports

Senate Democrats blocked legislation to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports Monday evening.

Senators voted 51 to 45 along party lines to defeat a cloture vote on Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. The legislation would codify President Donald Trump’s executive order enacting a categorical ban on transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

Senate Democrats chose to tank the legislation despite roughly eight in 10 Americans opposing transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports, including a majority of Democratic voters, according to New York Times-Ipsos polling conducted in January.

Tuberville’s bill would interpret Title IX to bar biological males from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and would withhold federal funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. The Biden administration’s attempt to rewrite Title IX to include gender identity, which would have opened up girls and women’s sports to transgender athletes, was ultimately blocked by a federal court judge.

“Instead of standing up for women and girls, Democrats voted to cosign Joe Biden’s attempted assault on Title IX,” Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Democrats who voted against the bill to protect women’s sports include Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, whose constituents appear to overwhelmingly support legislation to bar biological males from competing against women and girls.

73% of voters in my neighboring state of Georgia do NOT want men competing in women’s sports.

I hope my Georgia Senate colleagues will join me in voting for the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act on Monday to protect Title IX and SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS. pic.twitter.com/TbeNJhenI9

— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) February 28, 2025

Approximately 73% of Georgia residents believe Georgia’s state government should ban biological males from participating in girls’ sports, according to a January poll by the Tyson Group that surveyed 600 likely Georgia general election voters.

“This is a matter of fairness and equality,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on the Senate floor Monday. “Girls should not be having to compete in races that are stacked against them. Women deserve their own athletic opportunities — opportunities that are not taken away from them by biological males, who have their own spaces in which to compete.”

“This will be a time of choosing for Democrats,” Thune added. “They can stand with women, or they can stand with a radical transgender ideology that would see women and their opportunities sacrificed to make way for biological males.”

Senate Democrats chose to follow in the footsteps of House Democrats who overwhelmingly voted against similar legislation considered by the lower chamber on Jan. 14.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did not mention the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act during his floor speech Monday despite the legislation being one of two votes on the upper chamber’s agenda.

Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz announced his opposition to the bill during a speech on the Senate floor during which he did not mention the words “women” or “girls,” a glaring omission for a party that has been widely derided for struggling to define the word “woman.”

“We’re going to do something totally irrelevant to 99.9% of all people across the country,” Schatz said Monday, dismissing more than 900 instances of women losing trophies to transgender athletes and untold examples of female athletes forced to share locker rooms with biological men who identify as women. “What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other.”

“Republicans are focusing on the wrong 1%,” Schatz added. “They’re doing it by going after some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

A transgender athlete won a girls’ high school pole vaulting competition in Maine after the state’s high school sports governing body announced its decision to defy the president’s executive order. In California, a biological male set the nation’s record for highest triple jump mark in 2025 in women’s high school track and field on March 1.

“Everyone deserves a fair and level playing field 100%,” Democratic Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, who voted against the bill, told the Daily Caller News Foundation prior to the vote. “These decisions are best left up to coaches to teachers to parents to the governing bodies like the NCAA.”

Women’s sports advocates have sharply criticized the NCAA for not fully complying with the president’s executive order and allowing transgender athletes to still compete in women’s sports through a birth certificate loophole.

Senate Democrats’ united opposition is a signal that the Democratic Party remains significantly out of step with Americans on transgender issues and could incur political costs from voters who view the party as radical on cultural issues.

“Monday’s Senate vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act could be the final nail in the coffin for the modern Democratic party,” Macy Petty, legislative strategist for Concerned Women for America and former NCAA volleyball player, wrote on X Thursday. “Politics will adjust, and they will be remembered in history as one of the most anti-women movements of our time.”

Senate Democrats also blocked an amendment offered by Tuberville to bar transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports in the 118th Congress.

Andi Napier contributed to reporting.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Flickr/ Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office)