FEBRUARY 4, 2025|
Photo – Man and woman tennis players – Courtesy pexels.com
In a one-two punch on Monday, the Wyoming legislature advanced two separate bills that fight back against a national trend of inserting men into female sports.
Wyoming lawmakers are drawing a line on the issue.
House Bill 60 expands Wyoming’s 2-year-old ban on males competing in girls’ interscholastic sports, grades 7 through 12.
HB 60 defines a female as a person “who naturally has, had, would have, but for congenital anomaly, or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that, at some point produces, transports and utilizes eggs for fertilization.”
HB 60—Student Eligibility in sport also applies to sports at the University of Wyoming.
The bill before state lawmakers also defines men as a “person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have…the reproductive system that, at some point, produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.”
Contemporary, trendy and faddish ideas about gender, and so-called political gender-identity divorced from biology, are ignored in the statute.
HB 60 also states that no school shall participate in any athletic activity that includes a male student competing as a female.
The bill’s sponsors include 11 representatives and six senators.
HB 60 passed the house Monday on the third reading consent list. It now goes to the senate with the six Democrats in the lower chamber the only nay votes.
Also on Monday, the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee moved a second bill keeping males out of female sports to the floor. House Bill 274, which prohibits men from competing in female sports, drew only one nay vote Monday.
Representative Rachel Rodriguez-Williams of Park County drafted the legislation. Representative Williams explained some of the inner workings of the bill, saying the legislation targets the university and junior colleges in Wyoming.
House Bill 274 passed with only one no vote, Mike Yin of Jackson. The bill now heads to the House floor for three readings.
