A legislator in Washington compared Thursday a legislation aimed at Prohibit transgender athletes From sports of girls and women in the state to racial segregation in the United States, arguing that those through the hall are “doing many of the same arguments today.”
Washington Democratic State Rep. Kristine Reeves He spoke during an executive session of the Chamber Education Committee on Thursday morning, where the members of the Committee presented SB 5123, a bill that aimed to expand the protections for the students, including gender expression and gender identity.
Archive: state representative Kristine Reeves, Washington Democrat, speaks during a round weapons security table in Seattle, Washington, on Friday, September 27, 2019. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg through Getty Images)
“I remember some time in the history of our country not long ago … where people like my grandfather were told that they could not participate in sports activities because he was black man,” Reeves spoke after an amendment proposed to The bill.
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“I can remember a moment in the history of our country, Madame Chair, where people like my grandfather and my great -great grandfather were not allowed to participate in processes and places in our society due to the color of their skin because people for years, for years, had told our society that black people were less than human, that black people were animals, that black people did not have brain capacity to compete with white Americans.”
Reeves said that, similar to scientific studies, provided they had argued an unfair physical advantage for trans athletes in women’s sports, people also “generated science to force people to believe in the argument that my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my great -grandparents were less than in our society.”
“We are repeating the story, the president, in this debate and is very, very scary for me that we are making many of the same arguments today about this subset of our population that my grandfather, my grandmother and my grandparents had to be subjected for years, and they were told that they were less than that they did not deserve the same rights as other people due to their skin color.”
Republican legislators At the committee meeting he did not agree with the Reeves claim, including his comments that “we have the ability to evolve.”
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, together with women athletes, signs the executive order of “No Men in Women’s Sports” in the East Room of the White House on February 5, 2025 in Washington, DC (Andrew Harnik/Getty images)
California legislator warns Democrats from the consequences for not protecting the sports of trans athletes girls
“This particular amendment focuses on athletic participation and one thing that does not change is bone density, lung capacity and the ability of a man in front of a woman,” replied representative Michael Keaton. “There have already been too many stories this year of wounded females, or women work their entire life to achieve a goal and be able to succeed in something, dedicate their life, and then a man changes categories and takes everything away.”
The representative Travis Couture echoed that feeling, and added that the amendment of the bill “is not about the black eye in the history of our racial relations.”
“I do not consider evolving, actually,” he added. “I do not think it is a false argument of me or my side to say that our opinion in this regard is that we are actually deviating from a time before title IX, a moment before women had rights in this country, a moment before girls could really go and compete in sports with other girls without having to risk being hurt or that their opportunities were stolen.”
“We go back in history, not towards the strikers.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that required entities that receive federal funds to align with title IX, which the Trump administration changed last month to recognize the protections on the basis of biological sex, undoing the rewriting of former President Joe Biden 2024.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, takes a question from a journalist during a press conference at the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC (Photo of Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The Trump administration has accumulated several states that have openly refused to comply, which leads to federal funds. In particular, the Administration arrested $ 175 million in federal funds for the University of Pennsylvania After the Department of Education initiated an investigation into the university on possible violations of the title IX.
The break in financing was not a direct result of the investigation, which means that the Ivy League school could lose more in federal funds.
At the state level, Maine officials have been the most open about the refusal to comply with federal law, resulting in a return to State Administration and Trump administration.
