Equality Caucus Press Conference on GOP Anti-Trans Agenda
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressional Equality Caucus Chair U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) held a press conference today on the radical anti-LGBTQI+ agenda House Republicans are moving in the Education and the Workforce Committee, with a focus on the proposed national trans and intersex sports ban being considered by the committee this week.
Shiwali Patel, the Director of Justice for Student Survivors & Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center, Rebekah Bruesehoff, a transgender student athlete, and Jamie Bruesehoff, a parent and advocate joined Chair Pocan for the press conference.
Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02), Congressional Equality Caucus Chair
Today Republicans are showing their real priorities, political priorities, by considering a trans and intersex sports ban as the opening salvo in their efforts to undermine the rights of LGBTQI+ people. Young people participate in sports, to be part of a team to learn sportsmanship and to challenge themselves. Their sports ban seeks to strip trans girls of all ages and intersex students of these opportunities. Look, there are real pressing problems impacting women's and girls' sports, including sexual harassment and assault, lack of equal resources and pay inequality. And there are pressing problems facing the kids of our nation including nearly 50,000 gun deaths a year including more than 4,700 involving kids. But rather than addressing any of those issues, anti-equality politicians on the Education and Workforce Committee will spend their first legislative markup targeting a handful of trans girls and women who participate in school sports.
When it comes to protecting women's sports, we should look to leading women's sports and gender justice organizations like Women's Sports Foundation, and the National Women's Law Center. Both organizations, as well as leading women athletes, support transgender inclusion in sports. Major athletic bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, and the NCAA have guidelines for the participation of transgender athletes. And those bodies reject the type of systematic exclusion of transgender people from sports that anti-LGBTQI+ politicians are pushing. This is part of a larger, coordinated attack against transgender people and the larger gay community.
We've seen hundreds of anti-equality bills, with many specifically targeting transgender people introduced in states across the country this year. Unfortunately, this is about building the personal brand of some extreme right-wing politicians; people who fundraise from an appeal to a small subset of their political base. These bullying politicians will endanger the lives of trans kids for their own political purposes with the support of the GOP leadership. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Not one person in Republican leadership called out the comments by a conservative speaker at CPAC last week who called for the eradication of transgender people. Look, this isn't about sports. This is about attacking trans and other LGBTQI plus kids, and the politics of the issue, not the substance of letting kids play. And that's heartless, and cruel, and very wrong.
There will be few pages assigned to future chapters of Profiles in Courage for the politicians that bully kids for their own gain. And that's exactly what this is about today. We are really pleased to be joined by a few folks who are going to offer some really strong expertise and talking about this. In just a minute you're going to hear from Shiwali Patel, who's the Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center, you're going to hear from a student athlete, Rebekah Bruesehoff. And you're going to hear from her mother, Jamie, who are going to talk about how this impacts real families, as unfortunately too many extreme MAGA politicians are busy lining their campaign coffers and appealing to a political base. So with that, I'd like to introduce Shewali Patel from the National Women's Law Center.
Shewali Patel, Director of Justice for Student Survivors & Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center
Thank you, I'm Shewali Patel, a Title IX civil rights attorney at the National Women's Law Center, where I work every day to ensure that women's and girls' civil rights are strongly protected in schools. And I'm honored to be here alongside Rebekah and her mother Jamie and Chair Pocan to express the Law Center's strong opposition to efforts to ban transgender women and girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. These efforts seek to deny trans athletes access to the many benefits; to emotional, social, and physical and academic wellbeing that participation in sports offer.
Transphobic laws and policies turn Title IX and the critical protections it offers against sex discrimination and education on its head. The Law Center was founded the same year the Title IX was enacted just over 50 years ago, and since then, we have been fighting against sex discrimination in education, including in school sports. And today we're paying close attention to the attacks against transgender, nonbinary and intersex students through hateful federal and state legislation, including the GOP's bill H.R. 734, which is about to go into markup.
While this bill is framed as protecting women's and girls' sports, we know what it really is. It's a bigoted and discriminatory attempt to target an already marginalized group, rather than address real barriers to gender equity and sports. This bill and other bills across the country like it are intentionally misleading when invoking women and girls' rights because they really seek to exclude trans women and girls from sports. It's also very telling that these bills are pushed by groups who haven't actually fought to protect women's and girls' rights in sports and elsewhere. There are actual well-documented barriers to athletics that women and girls face, including less funded and resourced teams, inadequate facilities and equipment. unequal pay for women's athletes and coaches, and rampant sexual abuse of student athletes. But these bills and H.R. 734 doesn't address those issues. And yet proponents of these sports bans continue to and wrongly claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women and girls, but this divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong.
Excluding women and girls who are trans hurts us all. It invites gender policing that could subject any women or girl to invasive medical test, and accusations of being too masculine or too good at their sport to be real women or girls. It subjects athletes to humiliating practices to determine their sex and makes them vulnerable to sexual abuse by being forced into sex verification procedures that may include gynecological exams or other procedures. It harms women and girls who fall outside of stereotypical notions of femininity, and especially black and brown women and girls, given racist standards of what is considered feminine. As a national women's rights organization, we have always been clear that transgender girls are girls who should have the right to participate in athletics and other school programs and activities consistent with their gender identity.
Trans and intersex girls and women have been playing school sports for many years, and yet they have not been dominating their peers. There's no evidence of it. In fact, allowing trans athletes to participate in sports correlates with increased participation by all girls. But in states that enacted trans exclusionary policies in sports, girls' overall participation in high school sports actually declined. And despite all this fear mongering from extremist lawmakers, boys are not pretending to be girls to dominate in school sports that just isn't happening. Yet unfortunately, politicians acting in bad faith are using trans women and girls as political pawns to perpetuate their hateful agenda.
The truth is like any other girl or woman, sometimes trans women and girls lose at their game, and sometimes they win. And when they win, we celebrate, and we will continue to celebrate their wins. Banning certain students from sports merely because of who they are doesn't promote fairness, or safety for women and girls. But H.R. 734 would mandate discriminatory exclusion for every age, every sport and level of competition gatekeeping which women and girls get a chance to play and clearly violating Title IX's mandate of equal educational opportunity. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Rebekah Bruesehoff, Trans Student Athlete and Activist
Hi, my name is Rebekah. I'm a 16-year-old high school sophomore who actually loves school. I'm a straight A Honors student. I have a solo in the spring musical. French toast is my favorite food. I'm a pastor's kid and a big sister to two brothers who can be really annoying sometimes, and I still love them. I also happen to be transgender. I've been living as my authentic self for eight years. That's over half my life. I started playing field hockey when I was 10 years old, and I fell in love. It's fun, full of speed and excitement and getting to hit a ball with a stick. Who doesn't love that? But seriously, it's one of the hardest and most rewarding things I do.
Field Hockey gives me so much – confidence, strength, and a place to belong. For me, it's not just my sport, it's my community. Through field hockey, I learned how hard work and perseverance can help you make a real-time difference. That translates to everything I do in life. I've had incredible coaches and wonderful teammates. There's never been a question of whether I belonged, whether it's on or off the field. We take care of each other.
I should be in chemistry class right now. But I'm here to tell you that kids like me should get to play sports with their friends. Honestly, that feels super absurd when I say it out loud yet, that's what's happening here. Either been speaking out about the right of kids like me to play sports for over two years, I've watched with my friends and other states have had t their right to play debated and legislated. But I live in New Jersey. I live in New Jersey, where I thought I was safe, where everyone said I was safe. I don't understand why lawmakers insist on bullying kids who just want to play.
Sports are one of the most American experiences in any childhood, a federal sports ban would alienate me from my community, and prevent me from continuing to become a better version of myself. It would limit access to essential life skills that we want all kids to have, like grit, determination, and learning to work with others towards a common goal. I've been raised and taught by my parents, coaches, and teachers to be the kind of person who works actively to include people. Make sure no one eats alone in the lunchroom, and who stands up to bullies. That's what I'm doing here.
Trans kids are a part of every community across the country. We aren't going anywhere; we will keep standing up together. And we all deserve a chance to be kids and to play.
Jamie Bruesehoff, Parent & Advocate
My name is Jamie Bruesehoff and my husband Chris here and I are the proud parents of three children, including Rebecca. There are many things that make Rebecca special; her smile, her laugh, the way she cares deeply about the world. Being transgender is the least remarkable thing about her.
And as a family of faith, we believe that God created her to be exactly who she is. When I think about what I want for my children, it's what most parents want. I want them to grow into functioning adults who positively contribute to society, are active in their community, and experience joy. I want them to learn how to fall down and get back up to take care of each other and the people around them.
Sports, unlike anything else, teaches them how to do those things. That's why parents all over the country commit to getting our kids to practice; washing uniforms, cutting up orange slices, and sitting all day in the bleachers where we're either freezing or getting sunburned. We all do it because we know getting to play the game they love makes our kids not just better teammates, but better human beings. But when I'm watching Rebecca play, I'm not just holding my breath hoping her team makes the next goal. I'm wondering when what's happening to kids in Texas is going to happen to Rebecca and our family.
To be categorically excluded from being a full member of her school community in this way would impact every part of her life and separate her not just from her peers, but the coaches and mentors helping her grow into the best version of herself. The idea that lawmakers would spend more time debating whether our daughter gets to play with her friends than they would protecting her from school shootings and gun violence is outrageous. Plenty of things would make school safer for youth and allow all kids a better educational experience. Keeping trans youth for and playing with their peers is not one of them.
Hundreds of thousands of families like mine are simply raising our children, like all families. And yet we find ourselves here defending our children from a radical political agenda that we've seen in state houses across America, and now making its way into Congress.
Politicians are trying to control how Chris and I parent, to legislate how we raise our kids. The terroristic nature of this kind of legislation impacts our families every day. They are censoring and surveilling our homes, our classrooms, and our doctor's offices. This isn't just about sports and trans kids. This is an attempt to dictate what an American family looks like. And American families can and do look like mine. All kids deserve a chance to be kids and to grow into thriving adults they are meant to be.