A legislator in Washington on Thursday compared the legislation aimed at Prohibition of transking athletes From girls and women’s sports in the state to racial separation in the United States, arguing that across the hallway they “make many of the same arguments today.”
Washington Democratic State Rep. Kristine Reeves spoke during an executive session in the House Education Committee on Thursday morning, where members of the committee introduced SB 5123, a bill aimed at expanding the protection of students, including gender expressions and gender identity.
File – State Representative Kristine Reeves, a Democrat from Washington, speaks during a gun safety round in Seattle, Washington on Friday, September 27, 2019. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I remember a time in our country’s history not so long ago … where people like my grandfather were told they couldn’t participate in sporting activities because he was a black man,” Reeves spoke after a proposed change to The bill.
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“I remember a time in our country’s history, Mrs. Chair, where people like my grandfather and my great-grandfather Grandpa were not allowed to participate in processes and places in our community because of the color of their skin because people for years-in-generations have told our society that black people were less than human, that black people were expensive, that black people did not have brain capacity to compete with white Americans.”
Reeves claimed that the scientific studies that have argued for an unreasonable physical benefit to trans-athletes in women’s sports, “also generated science to force people to believe in the argument that my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my grandparents were less than in our society.”
“We repeat the story, Mrs. Speaker, in this debate, and it is very, very scary to me that we put forward a lot of the same arguments today about this subgroup of our people that my grandfather, my grandmother and my grandparents had to be exposed to for years, and were told that they were less than not deserving the same rights as other people.”
Republican lawmakers In the committee meeting, disagreed with Reeves’ claim, including her remarks that “we have the ability to develop.”
US President Donald Trump, along with female athletes, signs “No Men Men In Women’s Sports” executive order in the East Room in the White House on February 5, 2025 in Washington, DC (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
California’s legislator warns Democrats of consequences not to protect girls’ sports from trans athletes
“This particular change is focused on athletic participation, and one thing that does not change is bone density, lung capacity and the ability a man has against a woman,” opposite rep. Michael Keaton. “There have already been too many stories this year with women being injured, or women who work their entire lives to achieve a goal and to be able to succeed in something, dedicate their lives to it, and then change a male categories and take it all away from them.”
Rep. Travis Couture repeated this mood and added that the change in the law “is about a black eye in the story of our race conditions.”
“I don’t see it developing,” he added. “I don’t think it is an unpleasant argument from me or my side to say that our opinion of it is that we are actually going from some time before paragraph IX, a time before women had rights in this country, a time before girls could actually go and compete in sports with other girls without risking being injured or having scholastic or other options that are robbed of them.”
“We’re going backwards in the story, not forward.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that required units receiving federal funding to adapt to title IX, which Trump administration changed last month to recognize protection on the basis of biological sex – to undo former President Joe Biden’s 2024 rewrite.
US President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter during a news conference in the Roosevelt space in the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The Trump Administration has entered several states that openly refused to comply with, causing federal funding to be drawn. Most notably paused administration $ 175 million in federal funding to University of Pennsylvania Following the Ministry of Education, a study of the university launched on potential violations of title IX.
The break in the financing was not a direct result of the investigation, which means that the Ivy League school could be losing more in federal funding.
At the state level, Maine officials have been the most obvious over refusal to comply with the federal law, resulting in a back and forth between the state and the Trump administration.
