By Hannah Schoenbaum
Associated Press/Report for America

RALEIGH — A bill banning transgender girls from playing on the middle school, high school and college sports teams that align with their gender identity is approaching the finish line in North Carolina as GOP-controlled state legislatures nationwide round out a record year of legislation targeting transgender residents.

The North Carolina bill, which passed Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee, only needs to clear one more committee before it receives a Senate floor vote for final approval. Both the House and Senate already passed different versions before legislative leaders opted to proceed with the House bill, which also applies to college students.

The previous vote for passage in the Senate indicates legislative approval may be swift. It could clear the Republican-led legislature as early as next week.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has little power to block it now that Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers for the first time since 2018. The gain earlier this year gave Republicans a clear path to consider certain LGBTQ+ restrictions that passed in other states but had not previously gained traction in North Carolina.

“This is not telling anyone they can’t play,” said Sen. Vickie Sawyer, an Iredell County Republican and primary sponsor. “This is only telling everyone that women’s sports is for women.”

Other limits on transgender North Carolinians could still become law in the waning weeks of the session, including a gender-affirming surgery ban for trans minors and a requirement that teachers alert parents if their child asks to use a different name or pronoun at school.

Local LGBTQ+ rights advocates say they feel demoralized by what they view as unrelenting attacks from the legislature that copy the conservative playbook used in other states instead of addressing the real needs of North Carolina residents. At least 20 other states have banned trans athletes from participating in the school sports that correspond with their gender identity.

But bill sponsors have repeatedly pointed to a volleyball injury in Cherokee County as justification for their claim that trans participation poses an inherent danger to cisgender girls in the state. They promoted the bill as a necessary precaution to protect the safety and well-being of female athletes.

The bill would designate sports by biological sex, as determined by “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” Restrictions would apply to state universities and community colleges, as well as all public and some private middle and high schools. They do not apply to intramural college sports.

Students would also have the right to sue if they are harmed by a trans student violating the restrictions.

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the socially conservative North Carolina Values Coalition, said the committee vote Wednesday moves the state one step closer to ensuring that “all student female athletes have a level playing field.”

But Sen. Natasha Marcus, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, said the bill targets trans girls “in a way that is mean-spirited and unfair.” She criticized Republican senators for referring to trans women as “biological males,” blasting it as “offensive.”

A previous version of the bill also prohibited girls from playing on boys’ teams, but the committee removed that language on Wednesday, narrowing the restriction to boys playing on girls’ teams. Bill sponsors still did not have a clear explanation for how the ban would be enforced.

Kyle Warren-Love, a trans man from Prospect Hill, said the bill “does just the opposite” of its stated goal of improving safety in sports because it “only creates a scenario where trans children feel unsafe.”

“You are faced with a choice,” he told senators at Wednesday’s committee meeting. “A choice of whether to show love to your neighbors, the same love I have felt from mine, or create a government that stops children — children — from living fulfilling lives just for being and living as who they are. Living as I am.”