Biden Says He Will Veto Bill Protecting Female Sports

President Joe Biden makes his way to board Air Force One before departing from Joint Base Andrews in Md. on March 31, 2023. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration has announced that the president will veto the H.R. 734 bill that seeks to protect female sports from transgender athletes.

H.R. 734, also known as “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” was introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and is expected to come to vote in the House this week. The bill seeks to prevent biological males from participating in women’s sports. H.R. 734 will amend Title IX to recognize sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

The House Education and Workforce Committee already approved the bill 24–17, with Democrats voting against it and every Republican voting for it.

“The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 734,” according to an April 17 statement (pdf) made by the office of the Biden administration. “If the President were presented with H.R. 734, he would veto it.”

The Biden administration addressed the issue by focusing on “elementary schoolers” who would miss learning “life skills” if the bill were passed. “Politicians should not dictate a one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams.”

The statement talked about a “nationwide mental health crisis” suffered by transgender youth who will be further stigmatized following the passage of such a law. “Discrimination has no place in our nation’s schools or on our playing fields.”

Moreover, the administration blamed Congressional Republicans for prioritizing policies that “discriminate against children” instead of focusing on “pressing issues” like “raising teacher pay, keeping guns out of schools, addressing the mental health crisis our youth face, and helping students learn and recover academically from unprecedented disruptions.”

However, the statement failed to address issues faced by female athletes due to the presence of males in competitions, which has historically never been allowed to happen due to the biological advantages males possess.

Challenging DOE Rule

H.R. 734 is a direct challenge to a newly proposed Title IX rule by the Biden administration’s Department of Education (DOE) that seeks to make school policies illegal if they “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.”

The rule is currently open to public comment.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as well as an original co-sponsor of H.R. 734, criticized the DOE’s proposed rule in an April 6 press release.

“At the hands of the Biden administration, Americans are witnessing a major shift in the country, where woke, far Left politics are advancing inequality and unfairness,” she said in a statement.

“This proposed rule takes on a totally perverse interpretation of Title IX that completely ignores the biological differences between boys and girls and men and women.”

Caroline Medina, director of LGBTQI+ Policy at American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute, insists that H.R. 734 is a “discriminatory bill” that will harm transgender youth and the civil rights of all students, according to an April 17 press statement.

“The effort to exclude transgender and intersex youth from participating in athletic programs in schools is part of a larger, coordinated campaign by MAGA extremists to attack and erase the identity of transgender and other LGBTQI+ kids in schools and beyond,” she said.

Defining Woman, Protecting Female Sports

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was present to defend the department’s proposed new Title IX rule. When Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) questioned Cardona on “what is a woman,” the Secretary of Education gave no direct answer.

“Our focus at the department is to provide equal access to students, including students who are LGBTQ, access free from discrimination,” Cardona said. Even after repeatedly asking Cardona to define a woman, Clyde received no answer.

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), a former professional athlete with the NFL’s New York Jets, warns that the ramifications of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports go far beyond a “game.” Many girls rely on athletic scholarships to get into college, he said.

“We should not allow biological men to steal from women and girls their spot on a sports team. We need more people with old-school courage to stand up and say as much … You can’t let young girls continue to suffer just to stay on the safe side of political correctness.”