A legislator in Washington compared to legislation aimed at Prohibit transgender -athletes From girls’ and women’s sports in the state to racial segregation in the United States, with the argument that those in the aisle ‘make many of the same arguments today’.
Washington Democratic State Rep. Kristine Reeves During an executive session of the House Education Committee, spoke on Thursday morning, where members of the SB 5123 committee introduced, a bill that expanded protection for students, including gender expression and gender identity.
File – State representative Kristine Reeves, a Democrat from Washington, speaks during a safety round of the arms safety in Seattle, Washington on Friday, September 27, 2019. (Chona Cousin/Bloomberg via Getty images)
“I remember a while in the history of our country not so long ago … where people like my grandfather were told that they could not participate in sporting activities because he was a black man,” said Reeves said after a proposed amendment the bill.
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“I can remember for a while in the history of our country, Mrs. President, where people like my grandfather and my great-great-grandfather were not allowed to participate in processes and places in our society because of the color of their skin because people had told for years of generations that black people were less than people, that black people were Americans who did not have to compete with Blanken.”
Reeves claimed that similar to the scientific studies that have argued an unfair physical advantage for trans-athletes in women’s sports, also people “generated science to force people to believe in the argument that my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my great-grandparents were less than in our society.”
“We repeat the history, Mrs. Speaker, in this debate and it is very, very scary for me that today we make a lot of the same arguments about this subset of our population that had to be subjected to my grandfather, my grandmother, my grandmother and my grandparents, who were told that they were less than they did not deserve the same rights because of the color of their skin.”
Republican legislators In the committee meeting it did not agree with the claim of Reeves, including her comments that “we have the opportunity to evolve.”
US President Donald Trump, accompanied by female athletes, signs the executive command “No Men in Women’s Sports” in the East Room in the White House on February 5, 2025 in Washington, DC (Andrew Harnik/Getty images)
“This specific amendment is aimed at athletic participation and one thing that does not change is bone density, lung capacity and the ability a man has versus a woman,” went rep. Michael Keaton against. “There have been too many stories this year that women are injured, or women who work all their lives to achieve a goal and to be successful in something, to devote their lives to it, and then a male changes categories and takes it all from them.”
Rep. Travis Couture reflected that sentiment, adding that the change in the law “is about the black eyes in the history of our racing relationships.”
“I don’t really see it as evolving,” he added. “I don’t think it is an unfair argument of me or my side to say that our opinion is that we actually deviate from a time before title IX, a time before women had rights in this country, a time before girls could actually compete in sport with other girls without walking to be injured or a scholastic or other opportunities of them.”
“We are deteriorating in history, not ahead.”
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that required entities that received federal financing to adapt to Title IX, which the Trump administration changed last month to recognize the protection based on biological sex – rewriting former President Joe Biden’s 2024.
US President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter during a press conference in the Roosevelt room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty images)
The Trump government has introduced various states that have openly refused to pay, so that federal financing is drawn. The most striking is that the administration $ 175 million in federal financing at the University of Pennsylvania After the Ministry of Education had started an investigation into the university on potential title IX violations.
The break in financing was not a direct consequence of the research, which means that the Ivy League school could lose more in federal financing.
At the level of the state, Maine officials have been the most pronounced about the refusal to comply with the federal law, which resulted in a back and forth between the state and the Trump government.
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