Texas bill targeting transgender youth in sports to be heard on Texas floor Tuesday

Lauren Rodriguez says her transgender son, Greyston, never got the childhood experienced he deserved.

“[His school] wouldn’t let him play on the girls team because he looked like a boy,” said Rodriguez. “He couldn’t play on the boys team because they said, ‘he’s not a real boy’.”

That was around the time Greyston was entering 8th grade. While he participated in sports outside of his school in Copperas Cove, Texas, that changed when he finally came out as a transgender boy.

“Before summer of 8th grade we decided he needed to come out and be who he was at school and live his authentic life,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez says he was denied from playing sports like football and basketball with his male peers, and since then he has not taken up sports in school. Greyston is now set to go to college in the fall, but she cannot help but feel like he missed out on a big part of his youth.

“Sports with kids help them build friendships and learn teamwork, and how to lose and how to win. I don’t know if he would’ve been a great football bill or basketball player,” said Rodriguez, “but he wasn’t even given that option.”

Rodriguez says transgender children today could now face a similar outcome as her son if Senate Bill 29 becomes law.

SB 29 prevents transgender youth from participating in a sport corresponding with their gender identity. Instead, children must participate in the sport associated with their sex at birth and stated on their birth certificate. The exception is that a female student may “participate in an interscholastic athletic activity that is designated for male students if a corresponding interscholastic athletic activity designated for female students is not offered or available.”

After being initially killed in the House Public Education Committee, Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, brought the bill back up for a vote in retaliation for his bill, HB 3270 (a measure that would give TEA easier power to take over Texas school boards), which was killed on a point of order.

SB 29 could now be taken up on the House floor as early as Tuesday.

Supporters of the bill, like Texas Values, say SB 29 is primarily a way to prevent unfair advantages in female sports.

“This has been a phenomenon across the country, and we just want to make sure that these biological males who are stealing titles from female athletes aren’t able to do so in Texas,” said Mary Castle, Policy Advisor with Texas Values. “Female athletes have worked so hard, even since the 1970s with the enactment of Title 9, to have these sports opportunities for females so they cannot just win in their sport, but to have college scholarships and opportunities to excel even the workplace. So, I think the focus should be on how some of these young women are actually losing things that they’ve worked so hard for.”

Dr. Curtis Crane, a board-certified Plastic Surgeon who works directly with transgender children and their families disagrees with the argument that transgender females in sports are becoming an increasing phenomenon.

“It’s probably not something that’s happening on a day to day basis in Texas, but it makes headlines, and it’s used to create shock and awe around this phenomenon when we could just be supporting the community,” said Crane.

Crane’s practice, the Crane Center, is one of the largest practices in the world that is exclusively dedicated to taking care of the Trans community. Crane Center operates on about 1,000 patients each year, and Crane works with families to determine the best needs for their transgender child. This could be utilizing puberty blockers to slow down the development of hormones, or in some cases gender-affirming surgery.

“Politicians that are actually concerned about fairness, they should ask themselves the question, ‘well what is the difference between a man and a woman in sports,” said Crane. “Men because of testosterone, tend to have more muscle mass than women, and that’s probably the only difference.”

Crane says higher muscle mass in transgender females changes throughout the course of their transition and can also be mitigated by working out less or staying on estrogen. He says preventing transgender females from participating in female sports is discriminatory and “fairness” can be ensured in other ways.

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“There’s really simple test that can test body fat/skeletal muscle mass, and they’re accurate. So I think a great way to allow trans women in sports, would be to measure their skeletal muscle mass, and if it’s above the 90th percentile compared to the cis women they’re competing against, then they have to lose the muscle mass,” said Crane. “And they can do that by working out less, staying on estrogen, making sure they’re not on testosterone [and] then get their skeletal muscle mass within 90 percent of the people they’re competing with. Then, they should have no advantage.”

“The transgender girls who are playing sports are probably under care for hormones, and their hormones are being checked regularly by competent physicians,” said Dr. Erica Anderson, Board Member for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

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Anderson, who is also a Clinical Psychologist and current president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health, says passing SB 29, and other similar bills being proposed in 30 other states in the U.S., would create a solution to a problem that does not exist.

“Not unlike a few years ago where there were, in the same states, proposed transgender bathroom bills,” said Anderson. “I don’t think these bills will hold up under legal scrutiny. The states that pass them are going to be sued, there’s no question about it. It’s going to be a mess.”

Rodriguez says if SB 29 becomes law, more children will be left out like her son once was.

“I have some many friends with kids who range from 6 to 14 or younger, all ages, that this is going affect them,” said Rodriguez. “I don’t want them to ever have to come home crying like my son did and wanting to know why was he different, why was he wrong, why can’t he just be normal. They are normal, [and] they should be loved and affirmed in their gender identity, and they shouldn’t have their childhoods ripped away from them.”

The House meets at 10 a.m. Tuesday to start discussions.