The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 218-206 to pass a bill that would ban transgender students from competing in girls’ and women’s sports in elementary school through college.

Fiery exchanges erupted on the House floor, with conservatives in many cases using anti-trans language and Democrats, including several openly LGBTQ members, arguing that the bill is harmful to children, discriminatory, and unnecessary.

The decision by House Republican leadership to bring the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act to the floor on just the second week in which the 119th Congress is in session signals the majority’s appetite for legislation targeting trans rights and the extent to which the issue will remain a major focus and priority for conservative leadership in the Capitol and, beginning next week, in the White House.

All Republicans who were present voted in favor of the bill, while all Democrats voted no — with the exception of two members representing swing districts in Texas, U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez.

Cuellar opposed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act when it was introduced in 2023, explaining in a statement that he changed his position “based on the concerns and feedback he received from constituents.”

Gonzalez did not vote on the measure in 2023, but this year issued a statement explaining his support for the bill: “I believe that there should be rules to keep our sports fair and that boys should not play in girls sports,” the congressman said, using talking points that are popular among Republicans who often refer to trans women and girls as men and boys, whether for purposes of insulting them or because they refuse to acknowledge or choose to deny the existence of gender diverse people.

“Members of Congress must have the freedom to vote in a manner representative of their district,” Gonzalez said in his statement. “As Democrats, we should not be afraid to vote our district’s values because we’re afraid of Washington.”

During the 2024 campaign, Gonzalez’s Republican opponent ran negative ads about his support for gender affirming health care for trans minors. The congressman told Spectrum News in 2023 that “I have never supported tax dollars paying for gender transition surgeries and never will.”

Despite the newly seated 53-vote GOP majority in the U.S. Senate, the bill could languish in the upper chamber as the 2023 iteration did under Democratic control.

Still, President-elect Donald Trump promised to effectuate a ban, which experts believe would likely involve directing the U.S. Department of Education to find any school in violation of federal Title IX rules, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, in cases where they allow trans women or girls to participate in competitive sports.

Trump and other conservatives argue that cisgender women and girls are biologically disadvantaged compared to trans women and girls, which yields unfair outcomes for athletes whose birth sex is female, though research on the question of physical performance is mixed.

Proponents of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, who believe trans women and girls to be unfairly advantaged by their biology, argue that excluding them from sports is necessary to ensure fair outcomes in high-stakes competitions at the elite level, such as college athletic scholarships.

At the other end of the spectrum, the legislation contains a carveout that would theoretically allow for trans women and girls to participate in sports in limited circumstances: “Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a recipient from permitting males to train or practice with an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.”

As the measure was debated on Tuesday, opponents accused their GOP colleagues of exploiting a culture war issue to “divert attention from the fact they have no real solutions to help everyday Americans,” as U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) put it.

Several Democrats — who argued that in the absence of an enforcement mechanism, adults might inspect students’ genitals to determine their gender, which could facilitate child sexual abuse — began calling the legislation “the GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act.” 

The House Education Committee chair, U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), responded that birth certificates should be used to settle questions about students’ gender.

Opponents of the bill like U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), a lesbian and co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, contended that boundary-violating scrutiny of girls’ bodies is the “logical conclusion” of the measure.

Far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) leveled the baseless and false accusation that U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) a “groomer” and “child predator” in a post on X Monday, responding to a video shared by the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok in which the freshman congresswoman is seen reading to kids in a classroom.

According to the signage featured in the clip, McBride, who is the first transgender member of Congress, was participating in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s “Jazz and Friends National Day of School and Community Readings.”

The program is part of the organization’s Welcoming Schools initiative, which provides “trainings and resources for elementary school educators” to help “welcome diverse families, create LGBTQ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and nonbinary students.”

Prior to her first election to the Delaware state legislature, McBride served as press secretary for HRC from 2016-2021.

Monday’s post was not the first time in which Greene has, without evidence, accused LGBTQ people and allies of child sexual abuse or grooming, often for their support of age-appropriate classroom instruction on matters of LGBTQ history, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

She is not alone. As culture wars over issues of sexual orientation and gender identity have intensified in recent years, conservatives have increasingly used false allegations of pedophilia, bringing back a smear that was historically used against gay, queer, and trans people but until recently was considered out of bounds in mainstream political discourse.

RAINN, a national anti-sexual violence group, has highlighted the ways in which these baseless allegations are harmful not just to LGBTQ people but also to children, because they can diminish the experience of survivors and steal the focus away from real cases of child sexual abuse.

After her election to Congress in November, Greene and other House Republicans like U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina began attacking McBride, personally — proposing rules to prohibit her from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol and deliberately dead-naming and misgendering her.

By contrast, McBride last week introduced bipartisan legislation with GOP U.S. Rep. Young Kim (Calif.) to protect consumers from fraudulent scams that offer false promises to repair poor credit scores, becoming the first first-year member to introduce a bill designed to help American families.

The Washington Blade has reached out to representatives from HRC, McBride’s office, and the Congressional Equality Caucus for comment on Greene’s post.

Particularly since Republicans took the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023, legislative attacks against the LGBTQ community, at least at the federal level, have been blunted by U.S. Senate Democrats exercising their narrow majority in the upper chamber, along with President Joe Biden’s promise to veto any discriminatory bill that should reach his desk.

Next month, however, Republicans will take control of both chambers of Congress as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, marking the first time since 2018 that the GOP has governed with a trifecta in Washington. 

“We expect the Trump administration and House and Senate Republicans to continue their anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on all aspects of life, especially against trans kids,” Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), told the Washington Blade.

Durbin is among the Democratic senators who spoke out this week against a policy rider added to the National Defense Authorization Act by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.), which would prohibit the military’s health provider Tricare from covering transgender medical treatments for the children of U.S. service members.

“In his first term, Donald Trump enabled LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination, banned trans service members, and vilified trans kids,” Sorbe said, while “The Biden-Harris administration and Democrats codified same-sex marriage, declared mpox a national emergency, and built up the LGBTQ+ movement.”

He added, “Democrats will continue to hold the line against misguided, anti-freedom legislation that we anticipate will be introduced.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee, one of the most powerful in Congress, exercises broad legislative jurisdiction and is responsible for oversight of the Executive Branch as well as the initial stages of confirming the president’s nominees for vacancies on the federal bench, including those picked to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 117th Congress, control of the Senate was a 50-50 split, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes. Democrats won another Senate seat in the 2022 midterms and for the past two years Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has led a 51-49 majority.

Despite the party’s narrow margin of control and starting with less than half the number of vacancies than were available for Trump to fill when he took office in 2017, Sorbe noted Senate Democrats are expected to confirm Biden’s 234th and 235th judicial nominees — surpassing, by one, the number of confirmations under the previous administration and also, by one, the record setting number of LGBTQ jurists appointed by President Obama over two terms. 

These “highly qualified, diverse candidates” will “help ensure the fair and impartial administration of the American justice system,” Sorbe said. Many will decide legal questions with broad implications for LGBTQ communities, including challenges brought against anti-LGBTQ legislation at the local, state, and federal level, or anti-LGBTQ policies enacted by the Trump-Vance administration. 

Sorbe highlighted some of the other work Durbin has done to “protect civil rights for all Americans” over the past four years in the majority, pointing to the Judiciary Committee’s 2021 hearing on the Equality Act, legislation that would codify LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections; a 2023 hearing that celebrated “the historic progress made in protecting the right of LGBTQ+ Americans”; the first hearing since 1984 about the Equal Rights Amendment that would “enshrine gender equality into the Constitution”; floor speeches in which the majority whip denounced “the harmful anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being introduced across the country”; and the senator’s co-sponsorship of the Respect for Marriage Act, which solidified the legal rights of interracial and same-sex married couples.